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IN UNIFORM STYLE. 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Selected, with the author's sanction, by 
Edward Barrett. i2mo, 

THE MILTON ANTHOLOGY. 

Selected from the Prose Writings. 
l2mo, $2.00. 

THE SACRED ANTHOLOGY. 
(Oi-iental.) A Book of Ethnical Scrip- 
tures. Collected and edited by M. D. 
Conway. i2mo, $2.00. 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY 



1 



SELECTED AND ARRANGED 

WITH THE author's SANCTION 

BY 

EDWARD BARRETT 
SECOND EDITION. 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1881 



3 



3^ 



Copyright, 1876, w 
HENRY HOLT. 



T F Trow & Son, Printers, 
B. Hermon Smith, Stereotyper, aos-ais E. 12th St., New York. 

Ithaca N. Y. 



THE AUTHOR TO THE EDITOR. 



* * / can Jiinie little or no doubt bttt the book of selections 
which you have done me the favor to make is faithfully a?id 
judiciously excuted and will be a creditable and more or less 
useful little book ; so that my distinct attswer is, and must be, 
go on with it, as you yourself judge best. * * 

T. CARLYLE. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



The Sphinx, 

Influences, . . - 

Self-Development, 

Know Thyself, 

Work, - 

Laborare est Orare, 

Wages, - 

Reward, ... 

' Tools and the Man,' - 

Nobility, .' . . 

Happiness, 

Unhappiness, 

The Problem Solved, 

The Everlasting Yea, 

Consume your own Smoke, 

INIanhood, - - - 

The Ideal, 

Silence and Speech, 

The Unknown Great, 

The Silent Men, 

The Real Man, - 

The World's Judgment of Men of 

Good and Evil, ... 

Hero and Valet, 

Faults, .... 

Misunderstandings, 

Evil Resisted, - 

Impossible, 

The Goose, ... 

Perseverance, 

The Dunce, ... 

The Gifted Man, - 

The Conditions of Knowledge, 

The Fox, 

Stupidity, 

The Enemy, 

The Foolishest Man in the Earth, 



" Genius<- 







9 

9 

II 

12 
12 
12 
13 
13 
13 
14 
14 
15 

\l 

17 
18 

19 
19 
20 
20 
20 
20 
21 
21 
22 
22 
22 



CONTENTS. 



Marirund and Sheep, ... 

Society, -••••• 
Companionship, - . - . 

Biographic Interest in Art, ... 
Gossip, _ - - - . « 

The Sentimentalist, .... 
Senlimentalism, , . . . 

The Quack, - . . . - 

Guliibihty a Blessing, . . - 

Conscience, - . . . . 

A Shifty Woman, .... 
Herr Teufelsdrockh on the Necessity of Cloth, 
Gentlemen, .... 

Politeness, ..... 

The Vulgar, .... 

Riches and Gigmen, . . . - 

Ennui, - . . - . 

Half and Halfness, .... 
Herr Teufelsdrockh's Rejected Epitaph, - 
Man's Life a Poem, .... 
A Place in History, - . - 

Dr. Peasemeal on Ballet-Girls, 
The Public Speaker, ... 

Dandies, ..... 

Professor Teufelsdr5ckh on the Dandaical Sect, 
Laughter, ..... 

Ridicule, ..... 
Ridicule the Test of Truth, ... 
Nil Admirari, .... 

Hero-Worship, ..... 
The Age of Romance, ... 

Romance in Reality, .... 
Nothing Insignificant, ... 

Custom, ..... 

The Results of Man's Activity and Attainment, 
The Brotherhood of Mankind, ... 
The Generations of Mankind, 
Past, Present and Future, ... 

Beginnings, .... 

Life a Dream, ..... 
The Passage of Mankind, ... 
Childhood, 
Death. ..... 



23 
25 
27 
27 
29 
29 
29 
30 
31 
31 
31 
32 
33 
34 
35 

36 
38 
39 
40 

41 
42 
42 
43 
45 
48 
48 
49 
SO 
5° 
51 
52 
53 
53 
54 
55 
55 
55 
56 
56 
57 
57 
58 



II. 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



Great Men, 
Dante, 

His Intensity, 



64 
65 



CONTENTS, 



Dante and Shakspeare, 
Shakspeare — His Supremacy, - 

His Universality, 

His Tranquillity and Mirthfulness, 

His Catholic Spirit, 
Luther, - - . . » 

Luther's Portrait, . . - 

John Knox, - - . . 

George Fox, ... 

Mahomet, .... 

His Sincerity, 

His Way of Life, 
Cromwell, Hampden, Eliot, Pym, 
Oliver Cromvi^ell in 1652, 
Laud, .... 

Frederich Wilhelm, Father of Frederick the Great, 
Frederick the Great, 
Frederick and Napoleon, 
August the Strong, King of Poland, 
Marechal de Saxe, ... 

Napoleon, - - - . 

Mirabeau, .... 

Danton, .... 
Camille Desmoulins, . - . 

Robespierre, - - » 

Cagliostro, .... 

Voltaire, .... 
Rousseau, .... 

Goethe, .... 

Equanimity, ... 

His Character, • • 

Schiller, .... 

Richter, .... 
Lessing, .... 

Dr. Johnson, ... 

His Affectionate Nature, 
Boswell, .... 
Byron, ..... 
Cervantes and Byron, . • 

Byron and Burns, • • . 

Burns, - • . ^ 

Sir Walter Scott, - • . 

Coleridge, .... 

His Talk, 

His Character, 



67 
68 
69 
69 
71 
71 
72 

73 
74 
77 
78 
79 
80 
81 
82 

f3 

87 

89 

91 

93 

94 

94 

100 

102 

103 

103 

104 

106 

108 

108 

no 

III 

112 

"3 

114 

115 
1x8 
123 
123 
123 
124 
126 
129 
131 
133 



III. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



Literature, 

The Power of Literature, 



137 



CONTENTS. 



The Anarchy of Literature, 

The Chaotic Condition of Literature, 

The Art of Writing, 

Books and Universities, 

Boolis and the Church, - 

Literature and Government, 

Phases of Literature, - • - 

Soldiers of Literature, ... 

Organisation, .... 

The Poverty of Literary Men, 

Society^Money, 

Poverty, - ■ - , - 

Courage, .... 

The Poet's Life, .... 

Poet and Prophet, ... 

Definition of Poetry, Music, 

Rhythm and Melody, . . - 

Conditions of Poetry, ... 

Unconsciousness of Genius, 

Easy Writing, .... 

Some Very Ready Writers, 

A Great Discovery to be Made in Literature, 

Origin of Poetry, . - - 

Progress of Poetry, ... 

Taste, - . . . - 

Reading, ..... 

Two Ways of Reviewing, 

The Critic Fly, .... 

The Faults of a Work of Art, - 

The Study of Poetry, ... 

Judgment of a Foreign Work, • 

Scientific Criticism, ... 

Derivation of Poetic Beauty, 

Affectation in Literature — Byron, - 

What is Affectation ? - 

Singularity, .... 

The Beaten Paths, . . - 

Fame, True and False, ... 

An Example, .... 

The Love of Fame, . . - 

The Vanity of Fame, . . - 

History and Biography, ... 

How History is Written, 

Dignity of History, ... 

What a Biography should be, - 

Humour and Sensibility, ... 

True Humour, .... 

The Humourists, .... 

J^ Talent for Description, 

View-bunting, .... 

Novel Writing, .... 

The Nibelungen Lied, ... 



CONTENTS. 



The Koran, ..... 

The Book of Job, - . . - . 

The Divine Comedy, .... 

Burns's Poetry, . . - . . 

Tarn O'Shanter, .... 

The Jolly Beggars, - - - . - 

Burns's Songs, - - - . - 

Scott's Poetry, ..... 

The Latter Half of the XVIIIth Century— Werter, 

Goethe's Werter, ..... 

Schiller's Poetry, .... 

His Want of Humour, . . - 

His Greatness, .... 

Goethe and Schiller, .... 

Mephistopheles, .... 

Faust, - - - . - • . 



193 

195 
196 
197 
igS 
199 
200 
202 
204 
209 
210 
213 
214 
216 
217 
218 



IV. 



RELIGION. 



Religion, 

Paganism,^ . - . . 

Theories about Paganism, 
Origin of Paganism, 
Scandinavian Anthology, 
The Tree Igdrasil, - - . 

Odin, .... 
The Soul of Norse Belief, . 
Islam, .... 
Growth of Mahometanism, 
Mediaeval Catholicism — Dante, 
Shakspeare's Religion, 
Reformation, ... 
The Diet of Worms, 
Protestantism, ... 
"No Popery," . . . 

The Reformation and the Nations, 
Revival of Romanism, 
Formulas, ... 

Forms, . . . . 

Voltaire and Superstition, 
Religion in Danger, 
Movement and Change, 
Voltaire against Christianity, 
Christianity and Greek Philosophy, 
Stoicism, - - . . 

Origin of Christianity, - 
Denial, . . . . 

Free-Thinker, ... 
The Disease of Metaphysics, 
Speculative Metaphysics, 



225 
226 
227 
229 
233 
23s 
236 

237 
238 
240 
242 
243 
243 
246 

247 
247 
248 
250 

251 
252 

252 

253 
254 
256 

257 
258 
258 
258 
259 
259 
26c 



CONTENTS. 



Belief, ..... 

State of Religion — Unbelief, 
Teaching Religion, ... 

A New Clergy, - - . - 

Church of England, ... 

Creeds and Forms, ... 
Roman Augurs Outdone, ... 
Gospel of Mammonism — The English Hell, 
The Gospel of Dillettantism — The Dead-Sea 
Soul, ..... 
Morrison's Pill, .... 
Methodism, . . . . 

Religions and New Religions, 
Religion, .... 

Creeds, ..... 
Worship, .... 



Apes, 



V. 



POLITICS, 



Eighteen Hundred Forty-eight, 

Democracy in 1848, 

Republics, . • . 

Governing, . . - 

Governors, - ' - 

How do Men Rise in Your Society 

Talent, ... 

Bad Government, 

Vox Populi, 

Voting, .... 

Premier, - - ' - 

Blockhead in Office, 

Reform, ... 

Hints to Good Government, 

Reform begins at Home, - 

From Within Outward, 

Cromwell's Statue, - 

Public Statues in England, 

Modern Peerages, - 

Modern Prisons, 

Capital Punishment, 

Sentimental Benevolence, 

The Benevolent Platform Fever, 

False Benevolence, 

The Danger, 

War, .... 

A Nation's History, 

Modern Wars, ... 

Parliamentary Debates, 

Justice, .... 



CONTENTS. 



Education, - 

The Uneducated Poor, 

Await the Issue, 



VI. 

HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



313 
315 
315 



Death of Louis XV, 
Taking of the Bastille, 
As in the Age of Gold, - 
The Swiss, ... 
Charlotte Corday, 
Death of Marie Antoinette, 
Death of Madame Roland, 
The End of Robespierre, - 
Sansculottism, - 
Arabia and the Arabs, 
Warlburg, 

Sunset in the Mountains, - 
"On the High Table-Land," 
An Arctic Sunset, - 
Overlooking a Town, - 
Glimpses, • - . 



319 

321 

333 

345 
352 

359 
360 
361 
369 
372 
373 
27 i 
375 
376 
376 
377 



ABBREVIATIONS. 



In marking the source of each selection, the following abreviations 
have been used : 

C. for Cromwell's Letters and Speeches. 

Ch. " Chartism. 

M. " The Miscellaneous Essays. 

J^. " Frederick the Great. 

F. R. " The French Revolution. 

If. " Lectures on Heroes. 

Z. Z>. p. " Latter-Day Pamphlets. 

F. &= F. " Past and Present, 

S. F. •* Sartor Resartus. 

St. " Life of John Sterling. 

Where both Roman and Arabic numerals are given, the Roman ntt« 
merals refer to the 'Book,' the Arabic to the 'Chapter,' {S. F., II. 8— 
Sartor Resartus, Book II., Chap. VIII). Where the Chapter only is 
marked, Roman numerals alone are used. {Ch. X. — Chartism, Chap. 
X). Selections from the 'Miscellaneous' are marked with an M. fol- 
lowed by the Title of the Essay in Italics, (^/. Burns.) 



I. 

LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



THE SPHINX, 



How true is that old Fable of the Sphinx, who sat by 
the wayside, propounding her riddle to the passengers, 
which if they could not answer she destroyed them! 
Such a Sphinx is this Life of ours, to all men and so- 
cieties of men. Nature, like the Sphinx, is of womanly 
celestial loveliness and tenderness; the face and bosom 
of a goddess, but ending in claws and the body of a 
lioness. There is in her a celestial beauty, — which 
means celestial order, pliancy to wisdom; but there is 
also a darkness, a ferocity, fatality, which are infernal. 
She is a goddess, but one not yet disimprisoned; one 
still half imprisoned, — the articulate, lovely still encased 
in the inarticulate, chaotic. How true! And does she 
not propound her riddles to us? Of each man she asks 
daily, in mild voice, yet with a terrible significance, 
" Knowest thou the meaning of this Day? What thou 
canst do To-day; wisely attempt to do." Nature, Uni- 
verse, Destiny, Existence, howsoever we name this 
grand unnamable Fact in the midst of which we live 
and struggle, is as a heavenly bride and conquest to the 
wise and brave, to them who can discern her behests 
and do them; a destroying fiend to them who cannot. 
Answer her riddle, it is well with thee. Answer it not, 

3 



4 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

pass on regarding it not, it will answer itself; the solu- 
tion for thee is a thing of teeth and claws; Nature is a 
dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings, fiercely devouring. 
Thou art not now her victorious bridegroom; thou art 
her mangled victim, scattered on the precipices, as a 
slave found treacherous, recreant, ought to be and must. 

—P. Cf P. I. 2. 

INFLUENCES. 

We know not what we are, any more than what we 
shall be. It is a high, solemn, almost awful thought for 
every individual man, that his earthly influence, which 
has had a commencement, will never through all ages, 
were he the very meanest of us, have an end! What 
is done is done; has already blended itself with the 
boundless, ever-living, ever-working Universe, and will 
also work there for good or for evil, openly or secretly, 

throughout all time. —M. Voltaire. 

SELF-DE VELOPMENT. 

The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as 
consisting in this: To unfold your self, to work what 
thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the 
human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge 
beautifully remarks that the infant learns to speak by 
this necessity it feels. — H. VI. Cromwell. 

KNOW THYSELF. 

The painfullest feeling is that of your own Feebleness; 
ever, as Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And 
yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feel- 
ing, save by what you have prospered in, by what you 
have done. Between vague wavering Capability and 
fixed indubitable Performance, what a difference! A 
certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells dimly in 
us, which enly our Works can render articulate and 
decisively discernible. Our Works are the mirror 
wherein the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. r 

Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, Knoxv 
thyself; till it be translated into this partially possible 
one, Know what thou canst work at. —s. R. ii. 7. 

The fearful unbelief is unbelief in yourself —S. R. II. 7. 

WORIC. 

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no 
other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he 
has found it and will follow it! How% as a free-flowing 
channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour 
mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening 
river there, it runs and flows; — draining off the sour 
festering water, gradually from the root of the remotest 
grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a 
green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. 
How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and 
its value be great or small ! Labour is Life : from the 
inmost heart of the Worker rises his god-given Farce, 
the sacred celestial Life- essence breathed into him by 
Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to 
all nobleness, — to all knowledge, 'self-knowledge' and 
much else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowledge? 
The knowledge that will hold good in working, cleave 
thou to that; for Nature herself accredits that, says Yea 
to that. Properly thou hast no other knowledge but 
what thou hast got by working: the rest is yet all a hy- 
pothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in 
schools, a thing floating in the clouds, in endless logic- 
vortices, till we try it and fix it. 'Doubt, of whatever 
kind, can be ended by Action alone.' — P. &' P. III. 11. 

LABORARE EST ORARE. 

All true Work is sacred ; in all true Work, were it 
but true hand-labour, there is something of divineness. 
Labour, wide as the Earth, has its summit in Heaven. 
Sweat of the brow ; and up from that to sweat of the 



6 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

brain, sweat of the heart ; which indudes all Kepler 
calculations, Newton meditations, all Sciences, all spoken 
Epics, all acted Heroisms, Martyrdoms, — -up to that 
'Agony of bloody sweat,' which all men have called 
divine ! O brother, if this is not 'worship,' then I say, 
the more pity for worship ; for this is the noblest thing 
yet discovered under God's sky. Who art thou that 
complainest of thy life of toil ? Complain not. Look 
up, my wearied brother ; see thy fellow Workmen there, 
in God's Eternity ; surviving there, they alone surviv- 
ing ; sacred Band of the Immortals, celestial Body- 
guard of the Empire of Mankind. Even in the weak 
Human Memory they survive so long, as saints, as 
heroes, as gods ; they alone surviving ; peopling, they 
alone, the unmeasured solitudes of Time ! To thee 
Heaven though severe, is not unkind ; Heaven is kind, 
— as a noble Mother ; as that Spartan Mother, saying 
while she gave her son his shield, "With it, my son, or 
upon it!" Thou too shalt return home, in honour; 
doubt it not, — if in the battle thou keep thy shield ! 
Thou, in the Eternities and deepest Death-Kingdoms 
art not an alien ; thou everywhere art a denizen ! Com- 
plain not ; the very Spartans did not couiplam. ~P. &' 

F. III. 12. 

WAGES. 
Fair day's- wages for fair day's- work ! exclaims a 
sarcastic man : Alas, in what corner of this Planet, 
since Adam first awoke on it, was that ever realized? 
The day's-wages of John Milton's day's-work, named 
Paradise Lost and Milton's Woj'ks, were Ten Pounds 
paid by instalments, and a rather close escape from 
death on the gallows. Consider that: it is no rhetor^ 
ical flourish; it is an authentic, altogether quiet fact, — 
emblematic, quietly documentary of a whole world of 
such, ever since human history began. Oliver Crom- 
well quitted his farming; undertook a Hercules' Labour 
and life-long wrestle with that Lernean Hydra-coil, 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 7 

wide as England, hissing heaven-high through its thou- 
sand crowned, coroneted, shovel-hatted quack-heads; 
and he did wrestle with it, the truest and terriblest 
wrestle I have heard of; and he wrestled it, and mowed 
and cut it down a good many stages, so that its hissing 
is ever since pitiful in comparison, and one can walk 
abroad in comparative peace from it; — and his wages, 
as I understand, were burial under the gallows-tree 
near Tyburn Turnpike, with his head on the gable of 
Westminster Hall, and two centuries now of mixed 
cursing and ridicule from all manner of men. His dust 
lies under the Edgeware Road, near Tyburn Turnpike, 
at this hour; and his memory is — Nay, what matters 
what his memory is? His memory, at bottom, is or 
yet shall be as that of a god: a terror and horror to all 
quacks and cowards and insincere persons; an everlast- 
ing encouragement, new memento, battleword, and 
pledge of victory to all the brave. It is the natural 
course and history of the Godlike, in every place, in 
every time. What god ever carried it with the Tenpound 
Franchisers; in Open Vestry, or with any Sanhedrim 
of considerable standing? When was a god found 
'agreeable' to everybody? The regular way is to 
hang, kill, crucify your gods, and execrate and trample 
them under your stupid hoofs for a century or two; till 
you discover that they are gods, — and then take to bray- 
ing over them, still in a very long-eared manner! — So 
speaks the sarcastic man; in his wild way, very mourn- 
ful truths. —P. & P. I. 3. 

PEWAPD. 

The 'wages' of every noble Work do yet lie in 
Heaven or else Nowhere. — Nay, at bottom, dost thou 
need any reward? Was it thy aim and life-purpose to 
be filled with good things for thy heroism; to have a 
hfe of pomp and case, and be what men call 'happy,' 



8 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

in this world, or in any other world? I answer for thee 
deliberately, No. 

My brother, the brave man has to give his Life 
away. Give it, I advise thee; — thou dost not expect 
to sell thy Life in an adequate manner ? What price, 
for example, would content thee ? The just price of 
thy Life to thee, — why, God's entire Creation to thy- 
self, the whole Universe of Space, the whole Eternity 
of Time, and what they hold : that is the price which 
would content thee ; that, and if thou wilt be candid, 
nothing short of that ! It is thy all ; and for it thou 
wouldst have all. Thou art an unreasonable mortal ; 
— or rather thou art a poor infinite mortal, who in thy 
narrow clay-prison here, seemest so unreasonable ! 
Thou wilt never sell thy Life, or any part of thy Life, in 
a satisfactory manner. Give it, like a royal heart; let 
the price be Nothing: thou hast then, in a certain 
sense, got All for it! The heroic man, — and is not 
every man, God be thanked, a potential^ hero? — has 
to do so, in all times and circumstances. In the most 
heroic age, as in the most unheroic, he will have to say, 
as Burns said proudly and humbly of his little Scottish 
Songs, little dewdrops of Celestial Melody in an age 
when so much was unmelodious: "By Heaven, they 
shall either be invaluable or of no value; I do not need 
your guineas for them ! " It is an element which should, 
and must, enter deeply into all settlements of wages 
here below. They never will be ' satisfactory ' otherwise ; 
they cannot, O Mammon Gospel, they never can ! 
Money for my little piece of work 'to the extent that 
will allow me to keep working'; yes, this, — unless you 
mean that I shall go my ways before the work is all 
taken out of me: but as to 'wages' — ! —P. &^F. in. 12, 

'TOOLS AND THE MAN: 

The proper Epic of this world is not now 'Arms and 
the Man'; how much less, 'Shirt-frills and the Man': 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. g 

no, it is now 'Tools and the Man': that, henceforth to 
all time is now our Epic. —P. &^P. in. 12. 

NOBILITY. 
In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful mak- 
ing others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie. The 
chief of men is he who stands in the van of men; 
fronting the peril which frightens back all others; which, 
if it be not vanquished, will devour the others. Every 
noble crown is, and on Earth will forever be, a crown 
of thorns. —P. &= P. ill. 8. 

HAPPINESS. 
All work, even cotton-spinning, is noble; work is 
alone noble: be that here said and asserted once more. 
And in like manner, too, all dignity is painful; a life of 
ease is not for any man, nor for any god. The life of 
all gods figures itself to us as a Sublime Sadness, — 
earnestness of Infinite Battle against Infinite Labour. 
Our highest religion is named the 'Worship of Sorrow.' 
— Does not the whole wretchedness, the whole Atheism 
as I call it, of man's ways, in these generations, shadow 
itself for us in that unspeakable Life-philosophy of his: 
The pretension to be what he calls 'happy'? Every 
pitifuUest whipster that walks within a skin has his head 
filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all hu- 
man and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, 
the pitifuUest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his 
days, the pitifuUest whipster's, are to flow on in ever- 
gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the 
gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; 
thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The 
people clamour, Why have we not found pleasant 
things? — 

A gifted Byron rises in his wrath; and feeling too 
surely that he for his part is not 'happy', declares the 
same in very violent language, as a piece of news that 
may be interesting. It evidently has surprised him 



lO THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

much. One dislikes to see a man and a poet reduced 
to proclaim on the streets such tidings: but on the 
whole as matters go, that is not the most dislikable. 
Byron speaks the truth in this matter. Byron's large 
audience indicates how true it is felt to be. 

'Happy', my brother? First of all, what difference 
is it whether thou art happy or not ! To-day becomes 
Yesterday so fast, all To-morrows become Yesterdays ; 
and then there is no question whatever of the 'happi- 
ness', but quite another question. Nay, thou hast such 
a sacred pity left at least for thyself, thy very pains 
once gone over into Yesterday, become joys to thee! 
Besides, thou knowest not what heavenly blessedness 
and indispensable sanative virtue was in them; thou 
Shalt only know it after many days, when thiu art 
wiser!— A benevolent old Surgeon sat once in our 
company, with a Patient fallen sick by gourmandizino- 
whom he had just, too briefly in the Patient's judamenT 
been examining. The foolish Patient still at intervals 
contmued to break in on our discourse, which rather 
prt)mised to take a philosophic turn: "But I have lost 
my appetite," said he, objurgatively, with a tone of irri- 
tated pathos ; " I have no appetite ; I can't eat ! " " My 

dear fellow," answered the Doctor in mildest tone "it 
isn't of the slightest consequence ; "—and continued his 
philosophical discoursings with us ! 

Or does the reader not know the history of that 
Scottish iron Misanthrope? The inmates of some 
town-mansion, in those Northern parts, were thrown 
into the fearfullest alarm by indubitable symptoms of a 
ghost inhabiting the next house, or perhaps even the 
partition-wall ! Ever at a certain hour, with preternat- 
ural gnarring, growling and screeching, which attended 
as running bass, there began, in a horrid, semi-articu- 
late, unearthly voice, this song: "Once I wa.- hap-hap- 
happy, but now Pm meeserahlel Clack-clack-clack 
gnarr-r-r, whuz-z: Once I was hap-hap-happy, but 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. n 

now I'm mecs-erahlel" — Rest, rest, perturbed spirit; — 
or indeed, as the good old Doctor said : My dear fellow, 
it isn't of the slightest consequence ! But no ; the 
perturbed spirit could not rest; and to the neighbours, 
fretted, affrighted, or at least insufferably bored by him, 
it was of such consequence that they had to go and ex- 
amine in his haunted chamber. In his haunted cham- 
ber, they find that the perturbed spirit is an unfortunate 
Imitator of Byron ? No, it is an unfortunate rusty Meat- 
jack, gnarring and creaking with rust and work ; and 
this, in Scottish dialect, is its Byronian musical Life- 
philosophy, sung according to ability ! —P. &' P. III. 4. 

UNHAPPINESS. 
Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Great- 
ness ; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which 
with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the 
Finite. Will the whole Finance Ministers and Uphol- 
sterers and Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, 
in joint-stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy? 
They cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two ; for 
the Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his 
Stomach ; and would require, if you consider it, for his 
permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allot- 
ment, no more and no less : God's infinite Universe al- 
together to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill 
every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, 
a Throat like that of Ophinchus : speak not of them ; 
to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No 
sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it 
might have been of better vintage. Try him with half 
of a Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrel- 
ing with the proprietor of the other half, and declares 
himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is 
a black spot in our sunshine : it is even, as I said, the 
Shadoip of Ourselves. —S. R. II. 9. 



12 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



THE PROBLEM SOLVED. 



The Fraction of Life can be increased in value not so 
much by increasing your Ninncrator as by lessening 
your Denominator. Nay, unless my Algebra deceive 
me, Unity itself divided by Zero will give Infinity. 
Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou hast the 
world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time 
write: "It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that 
Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin." —S. R. 
//. 9. 

THE EVERLASTLNG YEA. 

There is in man a higher than Love of Happiness: 
he can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find 
Blessedness ! Was it not to preach forth this same 
Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the 
Priest, in all times have spoken and suffered ; bearing 
testimony, through life and through death, of the God- 
like that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he 
Strength and Freedom ? Which God-inspired Doctrine 
art thou also honoured to be taught ; O Heavens ! and 
broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even until 
thou become contrite, and learn it ! O thank thy Des- 
tiny for these ; thankfully bear what yet remain : thou 
hast need of them ; the Self in thee needed to be annihi- 
lated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting 
out the deep-seated chronic Disease, and triumphs over 
Death. On the roaring billows of Time, thou art not 
engulfed, but borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. 
Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is the Everlast- 
ing Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved ; wherein 
whoso walks and works, it is well with him. —S. R. IL. 9. 

CONSUME YOUR OWN SMOKE. 

To consume your own choler, as some chimneys con- 
sume their own smoke ; to keep a whole Satanic School 
spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a- negative yet 
no slight virtue. — ^. R. LI. 6. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 13 

The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own 
smoke'; there is no good in emitting smoke till you 
have made it into fire, — which in the metaphorical sense 
too, all smoke is capable of becoming ! —H. V. Rousseau. 

MANHOOD. 
Manhood begins when we have in any .way made 
truce with Necessity ; begins even when we have sur- 
rendered to Necessity, as the most part only do ; but 
begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have rec- 
onciled ourselves to Necessity ; and thus in reality, tri- 
umphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free. 
— M. Bunts. 

THE IDEAL. 
May we not say that the hour of Spiritual Enfran- 
chisement is even this : When your Ideal World, where- 
in the whole man has been dimly struggling and inex- 
pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and 
thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough, 
like the Lothario in Wilhelin Meister, that your " Amer- 
ica is here or nowhere " ? The Situation that has not 
its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes 
here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable 
Actual, wherein thou even, now standest, here or no- 
where is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and work- 
ing, believe, live, be free. Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, 
the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but 
the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: 
what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, 
so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou 
that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and cri- 
est bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule 
and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest 
is already with thee, " here or nowhere," couldst thou 
only see ! —S. R. 11. 9. 

SILENCE AND SPEECH. 

The benignant efficacies of Concealment, who shall 
speak or sing ? SILENCE and SECRECY ! Altars might 



14 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Still be raised to them (were this an altar-building time) 
for universal worship. Silence is the element in which 
great things fashion themselves together ; that at length 
they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the 
daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. 
Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable 
men I have known, and the most undiplomatic and 
unstrategic of these, forbore to babble of what they 
were creating and projecting. Nay, in thy own mean 
perplexities, do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for 
one day : on the morrow, how much clearer are thy 
purposes and duties; what wreck and rubbish have 
those mute workmen within thee swept away, when 
intrusive noises were shut out ! Speech is too often 
not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing 
Thought ; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, 
so that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, 
but not the greatest. As the Swiss Inscription says: 
Sprechen ist silberji, Shweigen ist golden (Speech is 
silvern. Silence is golden) ; or as I might rather express 
it : Speech is of Time, Silence is of Eternity, —s. R. 
III. 3. 

THE UNKNOWN GREAT. 

Indeed, who, after lifelong* inspection, can say what is 
in any man ? The uttered part of a man's life, let us 
always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a 
small unknown proportion ; he himself never knows it. 
much less do others. Give him room, give him impulse ; 
he reaches down to the Infinite with that so straitly- 
imprisoned soul of his; and can do miracles if need bei 
It is one of the comfortablest truths that great men 
abound, though in the unknown state. Nay, as above 
hinted, our greatest, being also by nature our quietest, 
are perhaps those that remain unknown ! — M. Scott. 

THE SILENT MEN. 
Ah yes, I will say again : The great silettt men ! 
Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE, 



15 



words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one 
loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. The 
noble silent men, scattered here and there, each in his 
department ; silently thinking, silently working ; whom 
no Morning Newspaper makes mention of! They are 
the salt of the Earth, A country that has none or 
few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had 
no roots ; which had all turned into leaves and boughs; — 
which must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us 
if we had nothing but what we can shozv, or speak. 
— H. VI. Cromwell. 

THE REAL MAN. 

What are your historical Facts; still more your bio- 
graphical ? . Wilt thou know a Man, above all a Man- 
kind, by stringing together beadrolls of what thou 
namest Facts ? The man is the spirit he worked in ; 
not what he did, but what he became. Facts are en- 
graved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key, 
—s. n. II. 10. 

THE WORLD'S JUDGMENT OF MEN OF GENIUS. 
The world is habitually unjust in its judgments of 
such men ; unjust on many grounds, of which this one 
may be stated as the substance : It decides, like a court 
of law, by dead statutes ; and not positively but nega- 
tively, less on what is done right, than on what is or is 
not done wrong. Not the few inches of deflection 
from the mathematical orbit, which are so easily meas- 
ured, but the ratio of these to the whole diameter, 
constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may be a 
planet's, its diameter the breadth of the solar system; 
or it may be a city hippodrome; nay the circle of a 
ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But 
the inches of deflection only are measured : and it is 
assumed that the diameter of the ginhorse, and that o*f 
the planet, will yield the same ratio when compared 
with them ! Here lies the root of many a blind, cruel 
condemnation of Burnses, Swifts, Rousscaus, which one 



1 6 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

never listens to with approval. Granted, the ship 
comes into harbour with shrouds and tackle damaged ; 
the pilot is blameworthy ; he has not been all-wise and 
all-powerful : but to know how blameworthy, tell us 
first whether his voyage has been round the Globe, oi 
only to Ramsgate and the Isle of Dogs. — M. Bums. 

GOOD AND EVIL. 

Moral reflection first : That, in these centuries men 
are not born demi-gods and perfect characters, but im- 
perfect ones, and mere blamable men ; men, namely, 
environed with such short-coming and confusion of 
their own, and then with such adscititious scandal and 
misjudgment (got into the work they did), that they 
resemble less demi-gods than a sort of god-devils, — 
very imperfect characters indeed. The demi-god ar- 
rangement were the one which, at first sight, this 
reviewer might be inclined to prefer. 

Moral reflection second, however: That probably 
men were never born demi-gods in any century, but 
precisely god-devils as we see ; certain of whom do 
become a kind of demi-gods ! How many are the 
men, not censured, misjudged, calumniated only, but 
tortured, crucified, hung on gibbets, — not as god-devils 
even, but as devils proper; who have nevertheless 
grown to seem respectable, or infinitely respectable ! 
For the thing which was not they, which was not any- 
thing, has fallen away piecemeal; and become avowedly 
babble and confused shadow, and no-thing; the thing 
which was they, remains. Depend on it, Harmodius 
and Aristogiton, as clear as they now look, had illegal 
plottings, conclaves at the Jacobins' Church of Athens; 
and very intemperate things were spoken, and also 
done. Thus too, Marcus Brutus and the elder Junius, 
are they not palpable Heroes? Their praise is in all 
Debating Societies; but didst thou read what the Morn- 
ing Papers said of those transactions of theirs, the 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



17 



week after? Nay, Old Noll, whose bones were dug- up 
and hung in chains here at home, as the just emblem 
of himself and his deserts, the offal of creation at that 
time, — has' not he too got to be a very respectable grim 
bronze-figure, though it is yet only a century and a 
half since ; of whom England seems proud rather than 
otherwise ? — M. Mirabeau. 

HERO AND VALET. 
No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet; and 
this is probably true ; but the fault is at least as likely 
to be the valet's as the hero's. For it is certain, that to 
the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not 
distant. It is difficult for men to believe that the man, 
the mere man whom they see, nay perhaps painfully 
feel, toiling at their side through the poor jostlings of 
existence, can be made of finer clay than themselves. 
Suppose that some dining acquaintance of Sir Thomas 
Lucy's, and neighbour of John-a-Combe's, had snatched 
an hour or two from the preservation of his game, and 
written us a Life of Shakspeare ! What dissertations 
should we not have had, — not on Havilct and The 
Tempest, but on the wool-trade, and deer-stealing, and 
the libel and vagrant laws; and how the Poacher became 
a Player; and how Sir Thomas and Mr. John had 
Christian bowels, and did not push him to extremities ! 
— Af. Burns. 

FAULTS. 

On the whole, we make too much of faults ; the details 
of the business hide the real centre of it. Faults ? 
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of 
none. Readers of the Bible above all, one would think, 
might know better. Who is called there ' the man ac- 
cording to God's own heart ' ? David, the Hebrew 
King, had fallen into sins enough ; blackest crimes ; 
there was no want of sins. And therefore the unbe- 
lievers sneer and ask. Is this your man according to 
God's heart ? The sneer, I must say, seems to rae but 
2 



1 8 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

a shallow one. What are faults, what are the outward 
details of a life ; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, 
temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ending struggle 
of it be forgotten ? * It is not in man th'at walketh 
to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, 
repentttnce the most divine ? The deadliest sin, I say, 
were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin ; — 
that is death ; the heart so conscious is divorced from 
sincerity, humility and fact ; is dead ; it is ' pure ' as 
dead dry sand is pure. David's life and history, as 
written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be 
the truest emblem ever given of a man's moral progress 
and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever dis- 
cern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul 
towards what is good and best. . Struggle often baffled, 
sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle 
never ended ; ever, with tears, repentance, true uncon- 
querable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature ! 
Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: *a suc- 
cession of falls ' ? Man can do no other. In this wild 
element of Life, he has to struggle onwards; now 
fallen, deep-abased ; and ever, with tears, repentance, 
with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again 
still onwards. That his struggle be a faithful uncon- 
querable one : that is the question of questions. We 
will put up with many sad details, if the soul of it were 
true. Details by themselves will never teach us what 
it is. —ff. n. 

MISUNDERSTANDINGS. 

So, however, are men made. Creatures who live in 
confusion ; who, once thrown together, can readily fall 
into that confusion of confusions which quarrel is, sim- 
ply because their confusions differ from one another; still 
more because they seem to differ ! Men's words are a 
poor exponent of their thought; nay their thought it- 
self is a poor exponent of the inward unnamed Mystery, 
wherefrom both thought and action have their birth. 



LIFE,- AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. jg 

No man can explain himself, can get himself explained ; 
men see not one another, but distorted phantasms which 
they call one another ; which they hate and go to bat- 
tle with : for all battle is well said to be misimderstand- 
in^. —F. R. Part III. B. Hi. 2. 

EVIL RESISTED. 
Evil, once manfully fronted, ceases to be evil ; there i? 
generous battle-hope in place of dead passive misery ; 
the evil itself has become a kind of good. — Ch. X. 

IMPOSSIBLE. 
It is not a lucky word this same impossible : no good 
comes of those that have it so often in their mouth. 
Who is he that says always, There is a lion in the way ? 
Sluggard, thou must slay the lion then; the way has to 
be travelled ! In Art, in Practice, innumerable critics 
will demonstrate that most things are henceforth impos- 
sible ; that we are got, once for all, into the region 
of perennial commonplace, and must contentedly con- 
tinue there. Let such critics demonstrate ; it is the 
nature of them : what harm is in it ? Poetry once well 
demonstrated to be impossible, arises the Burns, arises 
the Goethe. Unheroic commonplace being now clear- 
ly all we have to look for, comes the Napoleon, comes 
the conquest of the world. It was proved by fluxion- 
ary calculus, that steamships could never get across 
from the farthest point of Ireland to the nearest of 
Newfoundland : impelling force, resisting force, max- 
imum here, minimum there ; by law of Nature, and 
geometric demonstration : — what could be done ? The 
Great Western could weigh anchor from Bristol Port ; 
that could be done. The Great Western bounding safe 
through the gullets of the Hudson, threw her cable out 
on the capstan of New York, and left our still moist 
paper-demonstration to dry itself at leisure. " Impos- 
sible ? " cried Mirabeau to his secretary, " Ne mc dites 
jamais ce bete de mot. Never name to me that blockhead 
of a word ! " —Ch. X. 



20 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

THE GOOSE. 
* Impossible ' : of a certain two-legged animal with 
feathers it is said, if you draw a distinct chalk-circle 
round him, he sits imprisoned, as if girt with the iron 
ring of Fate ; and will die there, though within sight 
of victuals, — or sit in sick misery there, and be fatted 
to death. The name of this poor two-legged animal 
is — Goose ; and they make of him, when well fattened, 
Pate de foie gras, much prized by some ! —P. &' P. III. 2. 

PERSE VERANCE. 
The ' tendency to persevere,' to persist in spite of hin- 
drances, discouragements and ' impossibilities ' : it is 
this that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from 
the weak. —P. 6- P. IV. 5. 

THE DUNCE. 
The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they 
brought him a new pupil, " But are you sure he's not a 
dunce ? " Why really one might ask the same thing in 
regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; 
and consider it as the one inquiry needful : Are you 
sure he's not a dunce ? There is, in this world, no 
other entirely fatal person. — H. III. Shakespeare. 

THE GIFTED MAN. 
The gifted man is he who sees the essential point, and 
leaves all the rest aside as surplusage: it is his faculty 
too, the man of business's faculty that he discern the 
true likeness, not the false superficial one, of the thing 
he has got to work in. And how much of morality is 
in the kind of insight we get of anything ; ' the eye 
seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty 
of seeing ! ' To the mean eye all things are trivial, as 
certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, 
the Painters tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters 
withal. No most gifted eye can exhaust the signifi- 
cance of any object. In the commonest human face 
there lies more than Raphael will take away with him. 

— //. ///. Dante. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 21 

THE CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE. 

The real quantity of our insight — how justly and thor- 
oughly we shall comprehend the nature of a thing, es- 
pecially of a human being — depends on our patience, 
our fairness, lovingness, what strength soever we have : 
intellect comes from the whole man, as it is the light 
that enlightens the whole man. —M. Mirabeau. 

To know a thing, what we call knowing, a man must 
first love the thing, sympathise with it: that is be virtu- 
ously related to it. If he have not the justice to put 
down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to 
stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall 
he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded 
in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to 
the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a 
sealed book: what such can know of Nature is mean, 
superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely. 

— H. III. Shakspeare. 

THE FOX. 

But does not the very Fox know something of nature? 
Exactly so: it knows where the geese lodge! The 
human Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the 
world, what more does he know but this and the like 
of this? Nay, it should be considered too, that if the 
Fox had not a certain vulpine -morality, he could not 
even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! 
If he spent his time in splenetic, atrabiliar reflections on 
his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and 
other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, prompt- 
itude, practicability, and other suitable vulpine gifts and 
graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the 
Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same 
dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of 
vulpine life! — These things are worth stating; for the 
contrary of them acts with manifold very baleful per- 



22 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

version, in this time: what Hmitations, modifications 
they require, your own candor will supply. —H. III. 

Shakspeare, 

STUPIDITY. 

Pure Stupidity, indeed, is of a quiet nature, and con- 
tent to be merely stupid. But seldom do we find it 
pure; seldom unadulterated with some tincture of am- 
bition, which drives it into new and strange metamor- 
phoses. Here it has assumed a contemptuous trench- 
ant air, intended to represent superior tact, and a sort 
of all- wisdom ; there a truculent atrabilious scowl, which 
is to stand for passionate strength: now we have an 
outpouring of tumid fervour; now a fruitless, asthmatic 
hunting after wit and humour. Grave or gay, enthusi- 
astic or derisive, admiring or despising, the dull man 
would be something which he is not and cannot be. 

— M. German Literalitre. 

THE ENEMY. 

For the one enemy we have in this Universe is Stu- 
pidity, Darkness of Mind; of which darkness, again, 
there are many sources, every siii a source, and proba- 
bly self-conceit the chief source. Darkness of mind, in 
every kind and variety, does to a really tragic extent 
abound: but of all the kinds of darkness, surely the 
Pedant darkness, which asserts and believes itself to be 
light, is the most formidable to mankind! For em- 
pires or for individuals there is but one class of men to 
be trembled at; and that is the Stupid Class, the class 
that cannot see, who alas are they mainly that will not 
see. — Z. D. P. III. 

THE FOOLISHEST MAN IN THE EARTH. 

No known Head so wooden, but there might be other 
he^ds to which it were a genius and Friar Bacon's Ora- 
cle. — For, observe, though there is a greatest Fool, as a 
superlative in every kind; and the most foolish man in 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



23 



the Earth is now indubitably living and breathing, and 
did this morning or lately eat breakfast, and is even 
now digesting the same; and looks out on the world, 
with his dim horn-eyes, and inwardly forms some un- 
speakable theory thereof; yet where shall the authen- 
tically Existing be personally met with! Can one of 
us, otherwise than by guess, know that we have got 
sight of him, have orally communed with him! To 
take even the narrower sphere of this our English Me- 
tropolis, can any one confidently say to himself, that he 
has conversed with the identical, individual Stupidest 
man now extant in London ? No one. Deep as we dive 
in the Profound, there is ever a new depth opens: 
where the ultimate bottom may lie, through what new 
scenes of being we must pass before reaching it (except 
that we know it does lie somewhere, and might by hu- 
man faculty and opportunity be reached), is altogether a 
mystery to us. Strange, tantalising pursuit! We have 
the fullest assurance, not only that there is a Stupidest 
of London men actually resident, with bed and board 
of some kind, in London; but that several persons have 
been or perhaps are now speaking face to face with 
him: while for us, chase it as we may, such scientific 
blessedness will too probably be forever denied! —M. 

Biography. 

MANKIND AND SHEEP. 

The servile imitancy, and yet also a nobler relationship 
and mysterious union to one another which lies in such 
imitancy, of Mankind might be illustrated under the fig- 
ure, itself nowise original, of a Flock of Sheep. Sheep 
go in flocks for three reasons: First, because they are 
of a gregarious temper, and love to be together: Sec- 
ondly, because of their cowardice; they are afraid to be 
left alone: Thirdly, because the common run of them 
are dull of sight, to a proverb, and can have no choice 
of roads; sheep can in fact see nothing; in a celestial 



24 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Luminary, and a scoured pewter Tankard, would dis- 
cern only that botli dazzled them, and were of unspeak- 
able glory. How like their fellow creatures of the hu- 
man species! Men too, as was from the first maintain- 
ed here, are gregarious; then surely faint-hearted 
enough, trembling to be left by themselves; above all, 
dull-sighted, down to the verge of utter blindness. 
Thus are we seen ever running in torrents, and mobs, 
if we run at all; and after what foolish scoured Tank- 
ards, mistaking them for Suns! Foolish Turnip-lan- 
terns likewise, to all appearance supernatural, keep 
whole nations quaking, their hair on end. Neither 
know we, except by blind habit, where the good past- 
ures lie: solely when the sweet grass is between our 
teeth, we know it, and chew it; also when grass is bit- 
ter and scant, we know it, — and bleat and butt : these 
last two facts we know of a truth and in very deed. 
Thus do Men and Sheep play their parts on this Nether 
Earth; wandering restlessly in large masses, they know 
not whither; for most part, each following his neighbour 
and his own nose. 

Nevertheless, not always; look better, you shall find 
certain that do, in some small degree, knozv whither. 
Sheep have their Bell-wether; some ram of the folds, 
endued with more valour, with clearer vision than other 
sheep; he leads them through the wolds, by height and 
hollow, to the woods and water-courses, for covert or 
for pleasant provender; courageously marching, and if 
need be leaping, and with hoof and horn doing battle, 
in the van: him they courageously and with assured 
heart follow. Touching it is, as every herdsman will 
inform you, with what chivalrous devotedness these 
wooly Hosts adhere to their Wether; and rush after 
him, through good report and through bad report, were 
it into safe shelters and green thymy nooks, or into as- 
phaltic lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Ever 
also must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul'-s 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



25 



quick eye : ' If you hold a stick before the Wether, so 
that he, by necessity, leaps in passing you, and then 
withdraw your stick, the Flock will nevertheless all leap 
as he did; and the thousandth sheep shall be found im- 
petuously vaulting over air, as the first did over an 
otherwise impassable barrier.' Reader, wouldst thou un- 
derstand Society, ponder well those ovine proceedings; 
thou wilt find them all curiously significant. —M. Bonvell. 

SOCIETY. 

To understand man we must look beyond the individ- 
ual man and his actions or interests, and view him in 
combination with his fellows. It is in Society that man 
first feels what he is; first becomes what he can be. In 
Society an altogether new set of spiritual activities are 
evolved in him, and the old immeasurably quickened 
and strengthened. Society is the genial element 
wherein his nature first lives and grows; the solitary 
man were but a small portion of himself, and must con- 
tinue forever folded in, stunted and only half alive. ' Al- 
ready' says a deep Thinker, with more meaning than 
will disclose itself at once, 'my opinion, my conviction, 
gains infinitely in strength and sureness, the moment a 
second mind has adopted it.' Such, even in its sim- 
plest form, is association; so wondrous the communion 
of soul with soul as directed to the mere act of Know- 
ing! In other higher acts, the wonder is still more 
manifest ; as in that portion of our being which we 
name the Moral: for properly, indeed, all communion 
is of a moral sort, whereof such intellectual communion 
(in the act of knowing) is itself an example. But with 
regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, we 
might almost say, that Morality begins ; here at least 
it takes an altogether new form, and on every side, as 
in living growth, expands itself The Duties of Man 
to himself, to what is Highest in himself, make but the 
First Table of the Law : to the First Table is now super- 



26 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

added a Second, with the Duties of Man to his Nei^rh- 
bour; whereby also the significance of the First n'^ow 
assumes its true importance. Man has joined himself 
with man ; soul acts and reacts on soul ; a mystic mi- 
raculous unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life 
in all its elements, has become intensated, consecrated 
The lightning-spark of Thought, generated, or say rather 
heaven-kmdled, in the solitary mind, awakens its ex- 
press likeness in another mind, in a thousand other 
mmds, and all blaze up together in combined fire ; re- 
verberated from mind to mind, fed also with fresh' fuel 
in each, it acquires incalculable new light as Thought, 
mcalculable new heat as converted into Action. ^By 
and by a common store of Thought can accumulate, and 
be transmitted as an everlasting possession: Literature 
whether as preserved in the memory of Bards, in Runes 
and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone, or in Books of 
written or printed paper, comes into existence, and be- 
gms to play its wondrous part. Politics are formed ; 
the week submitting to the strong; with a willing loy- 
alty, giving obedience that he may receive guidance : 
or say rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant sub- 
mitting to the wise; for so it is in all even the rudest 
communities, man never yields himself wholly to brute 
Force, but always to moral Greatness; thus the uni- 
versal title of respect, from the Oriental Sheik, from the 
Sachem of the red Indians, down to our English Sir, 
impHes only that he whom we mean to honSur is our 
Senior. Last, as the crown and all-supporting keystone 
of the fabric, Religion arises. The devout meditation 
of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul, like 
a transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, 
acquires certainty, continuance, when it is shared-in by 
his brother men. 'Where two or three are gathered to- 
gether ' in the name of the Highest, there first does the 
Highest, as it is written, ' appear among them to bless 
them'; there first does an Altar and act of united Wor- 



LIFE, AND HIE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 27 

ship open a way from Earth to Heaven ; whereon, 
were it but a simple Jacob's-laclder, the heavenly Mes- 
sengers will travel, with glad tidings and unspeakable 
gifts for men. Such is SOCIETY, the vital articulation 
of many individuals into a new collective individual: 
greatly the most important of man's attainments on this 
earth ; that in which, and by virtue of which, all his 
other attainments and attempts find their arena, and 
have their value. Considered well, Society is the stand- 
ing wonder of our existence ; a true region of the Su- 
pernatural; as it were, a second all-embracing Life, 
wherein our first individual Life becomes doubly and 
trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude was in us bodies 
itself forth, and becomes visible and active. — M. Charac- 
teristics. 

CO MP A NIONSHIP. 
It is only in the sentiment of companionship that men 
feel safe and assured: to all doubts and mysteriou^' 
'questionings of destiny,' their sole satisfying answer is^ 
Others do and suffer the like. Were it not for this, the 
dullest day-drudge of Mammon might think himself 
into unspeakable abysses of despair ; for he too is ' fear- 
fully and wonderfully made ; ' Lifinitude and Incom- 
prehensibility surround him on this hand and that ; and 
the vague spectre Death, silent and sure as Time, is ad- 
vancing at all moments to sweep him away forever. 
But he answers, Others do and sujfcr the like ; and plods 
along without misgivings. Were there but One Man in 
the world, he would be a terror to himself; and the 
highest man not less so than the lowest. — M. Goeihc's 

Helena. 

BIOGRA PHIC INTEREST IN ART, 

Man's sociality of nature evinces itself, in spite of all 
that can be said, with abundant evidence by this one 
fact, were there no other: the unspeakable delight he 
takes in Biography. It is written, ' The proper study 
of mankind is man;' to which study, let us candidly 



28 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

admit, he, by true or by false methods, appHes himself, 
nothing loath. ' Man is perennially interesting to man ; 
nay, if we look strictly to it, there is nothing else inter- 
esting.' — 

Even in the highest works of Art, our interest, as the 
critics complain, is too apt to be strongly or even mainly 
of a Biographic sort. In the Art, we can nowise forget 
the Artist : while looking on the Transfiguration, while 
studying the Iliad, we ever strive to figure to ourselves 
what spirit dwelt in Raphael ; what a head was that 
of Homer, wherein, woven of Elysian light and Tartar- 
ean gloom, that old world fashioned itself together, of 
which these written Greek characters are but a feeble 
though perennial copy. The Painter and the Singer 
are present to us ; we partially and for the time be- 
come the very Painter and the very Singer, while we 
enjoy the Picture and the Song. Perhaps too, let the 
critic say what he will, this is the highest enjoyment, 
the clearest recognition, we can have of these. Art in- 
deed is Art; yet Man also is Man. Had the Transfig- 
uration been painted without human hand ; had it 
grown merely on the canvas, say by atmospheric in- 
fluences, as lichen-pictures do on rocks, — it were a 
grand Picture doubtless ; yet nothing like so grand as 
the Picture, which, on opening our eyes, we everywhere 
in Heaven and in Earth see. painted; and everywhere 
pass over with indifference, — because the Painter was 
not a Man. Think of this ; much lies in it. The Vat- 
ican is great ; yet poor to Chimborazo or the Peak of 
Tenerifife : its Dome is but a foolish Big-endian or Lit- 
tle-endian chip of an egg-shell, compared with that 
star-fretted Dome where Arcturus and Orion glance 
forever; which latter, notwithstanding, who looks at, 
save perhaps some necessitous stargazer bent to make 
Almanacs ; some thick-quilted watchman, to see what 
weather it will prove ? The Biographic interest is 
wantinsf: no Michael Angelo was He who built that 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 30 

* Temple of Immensity ; ' therefore do we, pitiful Little- 
nesses as we are, turn rather to wonder and to worship 
in the Httle toybox of a Temple built by our like. 

— M. Biography. 

GOSSIP. 

Even gossip, springing free and cheery from a human 
heart, this too is a kind of veracity and .y/^^<:>^ / much 
preferable to pedantry and inane gray haze ! 
—P. &'P. II. 2. 

THE SENTIMENTALIST. 

The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. 
Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully 
deceive us, or without first deceiving himself, what^good 
is in him ? Does he not lie there as a perpetual lesson 
of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian impotence? 
His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through 
every fibre, conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as 
if it were made of glass, and durst not touch or be 
touched : in the shape of work it can do nothing ; at 
the utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling, keep it- 
self alive. As the last stage of all, when Virtue, prop- 
erly so called, has ceased to be practised, and become 
extinct, and a mere remembrance, we have the era of 
Sophists, descanting of its existence, proving it, deny- 
ing it, mechanically ' accounting ' for it ; — as dissectors 
and demonstrators cannot operate till once the body be 
dead. — M. Characteristics. 

SENTIMENTALISM. 
Man is not what one calls a happy animal ; his appe- 
tite for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild 
Universe, which storms-in on him, infinite, vague-men- 
acing, shall poor man find, say not happiness, but ex- 
istence, and footing to stand on, if it be not by girding 
himself together for continual endeavour and endurance? 
Wo, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith ; if the 
word Duty had lost its meaning for him ! For as to 



OQ THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

this of Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over 
romances and on pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily 
will avail nothing; nay less. The healthy heart that 
said to itself, " How healthy am I ! " was already fallen 
into the fatallest sort of disease. Is not Sentimentalism 
twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it ? Is 
not Cant the materia prima of the Devil ; from which 
all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body them- 
selves; from which no true thing can come ? For Cant is 
itself properly a double-distilled Lie ; the second-power 
of a Lie. —F. R., P. /., B. Ii. 7. 

THE QUACK. 
The impostor is false ; but neither are his dupes alto- 
gether true : is not his first grand dupe the falsest of all, 
— himself namely ? Sincere men, of never so limited 
intellect, have an instinct for discriminating sincerity. 
The cunningest Mephistopheles cannot deceive a simple 
Margaret of honest heart; 'it stands written on his 
brow.' Masses of people capable of being led away by 
quacks are themselves of partially untrue spirit. —Ch. V. 

Quack and Dupe, as we must ever keep in mind, are 
upper-side and under of the self-same substance ; con- 
vertible personages ; turn up your dupe into the proper 
fostering element, and he himself can become a quack ; 
there is in him the due prurient insincerity, open vorac- 
ity for profit, and closed sense for truth, whereof quacks 
too, in all their kinds are made. — P. <St^ /*. /. 4 

No Quack can persuade like him who has himself some 
persuasion. Nay, so wondrous is the act of Believing, 
Deception and Self-deception must, rigorously speak- 
ing, co-exist in all Quacks ; and he perhaps were defin- 
able as the best Quack, in whom the smallest musk- 
grain of the latter would sufficiently flavour the largest 
mass of the former. — 

On the whole too, it is worth considering what element 
your Quack specially works in : the element of Won- 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



31 



der ! The Genuine, be he artist or artisan, works in 
the finitude of the Known ; the Quack in the infinitude 
of the Unknown. — If the ancient Father was named 
Chrysostom, or Mouth-of-Gold, be the modern Quack 
named Pinchbe'ckostom, or Mouth-of-Pinchbeck ; in an 
Age of Bronze such metal finds elective affinities, 

— M. Cagliostro, 

GULLIBILITY A BLESSING. 
Probably Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, 
and man's Gullibility not his worst blessing. —S. R. II. 3. 

CONSCIENCE. 
The Psychologists, however, commit one sore mis- 
take ; that of searching in every character named hu- 
man, for something like a conscience. Being mere 
contemplative recluses, for the most part, and feeling 
that Morality is the heart of Life, they judge that with 
all the world it is so. Nevertheless, as practical men 
are aware. Life can go on in excellent vigour, without 
crotchet of that kind. What is the essence of Life ? 
Volition ? Go deeper down, you find a much more 
universal root and characteristic : Digestion. While 
Digestion lasts. Life cannot, in philosophical language, 
be .said to be extinct : and Digestion will give rise to 
Volitions enough ; at any rate, to Desires and attempts, 
which may pass for such. He who looks neither before 
nor after, any farther than the Larder and Stateroom, 
which latter is properly the finest compartment of the 
Larder, will need no World-theory, Creed as it is 
called, or Scheme of Duties : lightly leaving the world 
to wag as it likes with any theory or none, his grand 
object is a theory and practice of ways and means. 
Not goodness or badness is the type of him, only shift- 
iness or shiftlessness. —AI. Diamond Necklace, V. 

A SHIFTY WOMAN. 
She is of that light unreflecting class, of that light un- 
reflecting sex : variiim semper et imitabile. And then 



32 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



her Fine-ladyism, though a purseless one : capricious, 
coquettish, and with all the finer sensibiHties of the 
heart ; now in the rackets, now in the sullens ; vivid 
in contradictory resolves ; laughing, weeping without 
reason, — though these acts are said to be signs of rea- 
son. Consider too, how she has had to work her way, 
all along, by flattery and cajolery; wheedling, eaves- 
dropping, namby-pambying : how she needs wages, 
and knows no other productive trades. Thought can 
hardly be said to exist in her : only Perception and 
Device. With an understanding lynx-eyed for the sur- 
face of things, but which pierces beyond the surface of 
nothing; every individual thing (for she has never 
seized the heart of it) turns up a new face to her every 
new day, and seems a thing changed, a different thing. 
Thus sits, or rather vehemently bobs and hovers her 
vehement mind, in the midst of a boundless many-danc- 
ing whirlpool of gilt-shreds, paper-clippings, and wind- 
falls, — to which the revolving chaos of my Uncle Toby's 
Smokejack was solidity and regularity. Reader ! thou 
for thy sins must have met with such fair Irrationals ; 
fascinating, with their lively eyes, with their quick snap- 
pish fancies ; distinguished in the higher circles, in 
Fashion, even in Literature ; they hum and buzz there, 
on graceful film-wings ; — searching, nevertheless, with 
the wonderfullest skill for honey ; ' imtSLvnahlQ as flies ! ' 

— M. Diamond Necklace, V. 

HERR TEUFELSDROCKH ON THE NECESSITY 
OF CLOTH. 

Society, which the more I think of it astonishes me 
the more, is founded upon Cloth. 

Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pomp- 
ous ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal-Draw- 
ing-rooms, Levees, Couchees; and how the ushers and 
macers and pursuivants ^re all in waiting ; how Duke 
this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by 
General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



33 



miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to 
the Anointed presence ; and I strive, in my remote pri- 
vacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, — on a 
sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the — shall I speak 
it? — the Clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps; and 
Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed Presence 
itself, every mother's son of them, stand straddling there, 
not a shirt on them ; and I know not whether to laugh 
or weep. This physical or psychical infirmity, in 
which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after hesita- 
tion, thought right to publish, for the solace of those 
afflicted with the like. — 

What would Majesty do, could such an accident be- 
fall in reality, should the buttons all simultaneously 
start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as 
here in Dream ? AcJi Gott ! How each skulks into 
the nearest hiding-place ; their high State Tragedy 
( Haiipt-tmd Staats- Action) becomes a Pickleherring- 
Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce ; 
the tables (according to Horace), and with them, the 
whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, 
Police, and Civilized Society, are dissolved, in wails and 
howls. 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Win- 
dlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords ? Imag- 
ination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and 
will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, the 
Ministerial, the Opposition Benches — infcmdinn ! infan- 
diwi ! — i". R. I. 9. 

Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like the 
Kangaroo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess 
the master-organ, soul's-seat, and true pineal gland of 
the Body Social: I mean, a PURSE? —S. R. I. 10. 

GENTLEMElSf. 
Seriously speaking, we must hold it a remarkable 
thing that every Englishman should be a ' gentleman ; ' 
3 



34 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



that in so democratic a country, our common title of 
honour, which all men assert for themselves, should be 
one which professedly depends on station, on accidents 
rather than on qualities ; or at best, as Coleridge inter- 
prets it, ' on a certain indifference to money matters/ 
which certain indifference again must be wise or mad, 
you would think, exactly as one possesses much money 
or possesses little ! We suppose it must be the com- 
mercial genius of the nation, counteracting and sup- 
pressing its political genius ; for the Americans are said 
to be still more notable in this respect than we. Now, 
what a hollow, windy vacuity of internal character this 
indicates ; how, in place of a rightly ordered heart, we 
strive only to exhibit a full purse ; and all pushing, 
rushing, elbowing on toward a false aim, the courtier's 
kibes are more and more galled by the toe of the peas- 
ant: and on every side, instead of Faith, Hope and 
Charity, we have Neediness, Greediness and Vainglory ; 
all this is palpable enough. Fools that we are ! Why 
should we wear our knees to horn, and sorrowfully beat 
our breasts, praying day and night to Mammon, who, 
if he would even hear us, has almost nothing to give ? 

■ — M. Ric liter. 

POLITENESS. 
A MAN of real dignity will not find it impossible to 
bear himself in a dignified manner ; a man of real un- 
derstanding and insight will get to know, as the fruit of 
his very first study, what the laws of his situation are, 
and will conform to these. Rough old Samuel Johnson, 
blustering Boreas and rugged Arctic Bear as he often 
was, defined himself, justly withal, as a polite man ; a 
noble manful attitude of soul is his ; a clear, true and 
loyal sense of what others are, and what he himself is, 
shines through the rugged coating of him ; comes out 
as grave deep rhythmus when his King honours him, 
and he will not ' bandy compliments with his King ; ' — 
is traceable too in his indignant trampling-down of the 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



35 



Chesterfield patronages, tailor-made insolences, and con- 
tradictions of sinners ; which may be called his revoltc- 
tionary movements, hard and peremptory by the law of 
them ; these could not be soft like his constitutional 
ones, when men and kings took him for somewhat like 
the thing he was. Given a noble man, I think your 
Lordship may expect by and by a polite man. No 
' politer ' man was to be found in Britain than the rustic 
Robert Burns : high duchesses were captivated with 
the chivalrous ways of the man ; recognized that here 
was the true chivalry, and divine nobleness of bearing, 
— as indeed they well might, now when the Peasant God 
and Norse Thor had come down among them again ! 
Chivalry this, if not as they do chivalry in Drury Lane 
or West-End drawing-rooms, yet as they do it in Val- 
halla and the General Assembly of the Gods. 

For indeed, who invented chivalry, politeness or any- 
thing that is noble and melodious and beautiful among 
us, except precisely the like of Johnson and of Burns ? 
The select few who in the generations of this world 
were wise and valiant, they, in spite of all the tremen- 
dous majority of blockheads and slothful belly- worship- 
pers, and noisy ugly persons, have devised whatsoever 
is noble in the manners of man to man. — L. D. P. V. 

THE VULGAR. 

Alas, the vulgarest vulgar, I often find, are not those 

in ragged coats at this day ; but those in fine, superfine, 

and superfinest; — the more is the pity! —L. D.P. V. 

RICHES AND GIG MEN.* 

Riches in a cultured community are the strangest of 
things ; a power all-moving, yet which any the most 
powerless and skilless can put in motion ; they are the 
readiest of possibilities ; the readiest to become a great 
blessing or a great curse. ' Beneath gold thrones and 

* "In ThurteU's trial (says the Quarterly Review) occurred the following colloquy: 
' Q. What sort of a person was Mr. Weare ? A. He was always a respectable per 
son. Q. What do you mean by respectable ? A. He kept a gig." " 



36 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



mountains,' says Jean Paul, ' who knows how many- 
giant spirits He entombed ! ' The first fruit of riches, es- 
pecially for the man born rich, is to teach him faith in 
them, and all but hide from him that there is any other 
faith : thus is he trained up in the miserable eye-service 
of what is called Honour, Respectability ; instead of a 
man we have but ^ gigmaii, — one who ' always kept a 
gig,' two- wheeled or four-wheeled. Consider too what 
this same gigmanhood issues in ; consider that first and 
most stupendous of gigmen. Phaeton, the son of Sol, 
who drove the brightest of all conceivable gigs, yet 
with the sorrowfullest result. Alas, Phaeton was his 
father's heir; born to attain the highest fortune without 
earning it : he had btiilt no sun-chariot (could not build 
the simplest wheelbarrow), but could and would insist 
on driving one ; and so broke his own stiff neck, sent 
gig and horses spinning through infinite space, and set 
the universe on fire ! — Or, to speak in more modest fig- 
ures, Poverty, as we may say, surrounds a man with 
ready-made barriers, which, if they mournfully gall and 
hamper, do at least prescribe for him and force on him 
a sort of course and goal ; a safe and beaten though a 
circuitous course ; great part of his guidance is secure 
against fatal error, is withdrawn from his control. The 
rich, again, has his whole life to guide, without goal or 
barrier, save of his own choosing ; and, tempted as we 
have seen, is too likely to guide it ill ; often, instead of 
walking straight forward, as he might, does but, like 
Jeshurun, wax fat and kick ; in which process, it is clear, 
not the adamantine circle of Necessity whereon the 
World is built, but only his own limb-bones must go 
to pieces ! — Goethe's Works. 

ENNUr. 

Surely, surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical tor- 
por, indifference to all that does not bear on Mammon 
and his interests, is not the natural state of human creat- 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



Z7 



ures ; and is not doomed to be their final one ! Other 
states once were, or there had never been a Society, or 
any noble thing, among us at all. Under this brutal 
stagnancy, there lies painfully imprisoned some tendency 
which could become heroic. 

The restless gnawing ennui which, like a dark dim 
ocean-flood, communicating with the Phlegethons and 
Stygian deeps, begirdles every human life so guided, — 
is it not the painful cry even of that imprisoned hero- 
ism ? Imprisoned it will never rest ; set forth at pres- 
ent, on these sad terms, it cannot be. You unfortu- 
nates, what is the use of your moneybags, of your terri- 
tories, funded properties, your mountains of possessions, 
equipments and mechanic inventions, which the flunkey 
pauses over, awestruck, and almost rises into epos and 
prophecy at sight of? No use, or less than none. Your 
skin is covered, and your digestive and other bodily ap- 
paratus is supplied ; and you have but to wish in these 
respects, and more is ready ; and — the Devils, I think, 
are quizzing you. You ask for 'happiness,' "O give 
me happiness ! " — and they hand you ever new varieties 
of covering for the skin, ever new kinds of supply for 
the digestive apparatus, new and ever new, worse or 
not a whit better than the old ; and — and — this is your 
' happiness ? ' As if you were sick children ; as if you 
were not men, but a kind of apes ! 

I rather say, be thankful for your ennui ; it is your last 
mark of manhood ; this at least is a perpetual admoni- 
tion, and true sermon preached to you. From the 
the chair of verity this, whatever chairs be chairs of 
cantxty. Happiness is not come, nor like to come ; en- 
nui, with its great waste ocean-voice, moans answer, 
Never, never. That ocean-voice, I tell you, is a great 
fact, it comes from Phlegethon and the gates of the 
Abyss; its bodeful never-resting inexorable moan is 
the voice of primeval Fate, and of the eternal necessity 
of things. Will )^ou shake away your nightmare and 



38 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



arise ; or must you lie writhing under it, till death re- 
lieve you ? Unfortunate creatures ! You are fed, 
clothed, lodged as men never were before ; every day 
in a new variety of magnificence are you equipped and 
attended to ; such wealth of material means as is now 
yours was never dreamed of by man before : — and to 
do any noble thing, with all this mountain of imple- 
ments, is forever denied you. Only ignoble, expen- 
sive and unfruitful things can you now do ; nobleness 
has vanished from the sphere where you live. The 
way of it is lost, lost ; the possibility of it has become in- 
credible. We must try to do without it, I am told. — 
Well ; rejoice in your upholsteries and cookeries, then, 
if so be they will make you ' happy.' Let the varieties 
of them be continual and innumerable. In all things 
let perpetual change, if that is a perpetual blessing to 
you, be your portion instead of mine ; incur that Proph- 
et's curse, and in all things in this sublunary world 
' make yourselves like unto a wheel.' Mount into your 
railways ; whirl from place to place, at the rate of fifty, 
or if you like of five hundred miles an hour : you can- 
not escape from that inexorable all-encircling ocean- 
moan of ennui. No : if you would mount to the stars, 
and do yacht- voyages under the belts of Jupiter, or stalk 
deer on the ring of Saturn, it would still begirdle you. 
You cannot escape from it, you can but change your 
place in it, without solacement except one moment's. 
That prophetic Sermon from the Deeps will continue 
with you, till you wisely interpret it and do it, or else 
till the Crack of Doom swallow it and you. 
— Z, D. P. VIII. 

HALF AND HALFNESS. 
Nothing properly is wholly despicable, at once detest- 
able and forgetable, but your half-knave, he who is 
neither true nor false ; who never in his existence once 
spoke or did any true thing (for indeed his mind lives 
in twilight, with cat- vision, incapable oi discerning \x\x\\\)\ 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 39 

and yet had not the manfulness to speak or act any de- 
cided He ; but spent his whole Hfe in plastering together 
the True and the False, and therefrom manufacturing 
the Plausible. Such a one our Transcendentals have 
defined as a moral Hybrid and chimera ; therefore, un- 
der the moral point of view, as an Impossibility, and 
mere deceptive Nonenity, — put together for commer- 
cial purposes. Of which sort, nevertheless, how many 
millions, through all manner of gradations, from the 
wielder of kings' sceptres to the vender of brimstone 
matches, at tea-tables, council-tables, behind shop-coun- 
ters, in priests'-pulpits, incessantly and everywhere, do 
now, in this world of ours, in this Isle of ours, offer 
themselves to view ! From such, at least from this in- 
tolerable over-proportion of such, might the merciful 
Heavens one day deliver us. — M. CagUostro. 

HERR TEUFELSDROCKH'S REJECTED EPITAPH. 
His grand principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of 
what sort soever, should be Historical rather than Lyr- 
ical. * By request of that worthy Nobleman's survi- 
vors', says he, ' I undertook to compose his Epitaph ; 
and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the fol- 
lowing ; which, however, for an alleged defect of Latin- 
ity, a defect never yet fully visible to myself, still re- 
mains unengraven ; ' — wherein, we may predict, there 
is more than the Latinity that will surprise an English 
reader : 

Hic Jacet 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

Zaehdarmi Comes, 

ex imperii concilio, 

velleris aurei, periscelidis, necnon vulturis nigri 

EQUES. 
QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDRICES 

PLUMBO CONFECIT : 



40 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQUE SeRVOS QUADRUPEDES BlPEDESVE, 

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTIT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 

OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM QU^RIS, 

FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT [sul> dato\ ; POSTREMUM [sub dato] 

—S. R. II. 4. 

■ MAN'S II FE A POEM. 
The life of every man, says our friend Herr Sauerteig, 
the life even of the meanest man, it were good to re- 
member, is a Poem ; perfect in all manner of Aristotelean 
requisites ; with beginning, middle and end ; with per- 
plexities and solutions ; with its Will-strength ( Willen- 
kraft) and warfare against Fate, its elegy and battle- 
singing, courage marred by crime, everywhere the two 
tragic elements of Pity and Fear ; above all, with super- 
natural machinery enough, — for was not the man born 
out of Nonenity ; did he not die, and miraculously van- 
ishing return thither ? The most indubitable Poem ! 
Nay, whoso will, may he not name it a Prophecy, or 
whatever else is highest in his vocabulary ; since only in 
Reality lies the essence and foundation of all that was 
ever fabled, visioned, sung, spoken, or babbled by the 
human species ; and the actual Life of Man includes in it 
all Revelations, true and false, that have been, are, or 
are to be. Man ! I say therefore, reverence thy felloiv- 
inan. He too issued from Above; is mystical and su- 
pernatural (as thou namest it) : this know thou of a 
truth. Seeing also that we ourselves are of so high 
Authorship, is not that, in very deed, 'the highest 
Reverence,' and most needful for us : ' Reverence for 
oneself ? ' 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



4r 



Thus, to my view, is every Life, more properly is 
every Man that has hfe to lead, a small strophe, or oc- 
casional verse, composed by the Supernal Powers ; and 
published, in such type and shape, with such embellish- 
ments, emblematic head-piece and tail-piece as thou 
seest, to the thinking or unthinking universe. Heroic 
strophes some few are ; full of force and a sacred fire, so 
that to latest ages the hearts of those that read therein 
are made to tingle. Jeremiads others seem ; mere weep- 
ing laments, harmonious or disharmonious Remon- 
strances against Destiny ; whereat we too may sometimes 
profitably weep. Again, have we not flesh-and-blood 
strophes of the idyllic sort, — though in these days 
rarely, owing to Poor-Laws, Game- Laws, Population- 
Theories and the like ! Farther, of the comic laughter- 
loving sort ; yet ever with an unfathomable earnestness, 
as is fit, lying underneath : for, bethink thee, what is the 
mirthfullest grinning face of any Grimaldi, but a trans- 
itory mask, behind which quite otherwise grins — the 
most indubitable DcatJis-Jicad! However, I say far- 
ther, there are strophes of the pastoral sort (as in Ettric, 
Afghanistan and elsewhere) ; of the farcic-tragic, mel- 
odramatic, of all named and a thousand unnamable sorts 
there are poetic strophes, written, as was said, in Heaven, 
printed on Earth, and published (bound in woollen cloth, 
or clothes) for the use of the studious. Finally, a small 
number seem utter Pasquils, mere ribald libels on Hu- 
manity : these too, however, are at times worth read- 
ing. — M. CagUostro. 

A PLACE IN HIS TOR V. 

Treating of those enormous habiliments, that were 
not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen- 
out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of 
Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment on that luck- 
less Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with 
some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay 



^2 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously 
emitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust : and stood 
there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes 
dangling sorrowful and flabby round him. Where- 
upon the Professor publishes this reflection : ' By what 
strange chances do we live in History ? Erostratus by 
a torch ; Milo by a bullock ; Henry Darnley, an un- 
fledged booby and bustard, by his hmbs ; most Kings 
and Queens by being born under such and such a bed- 
tester; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by 
the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by 
a rent in his breeches, — for no Memoirist of Kaiser 
Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer of The- 
mistocles for a talent of Forgetting : my Friends, yield 
cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.' 
—s. R. I. 7. 

DR. PEASEMEAL ON BALLET-GIRLS. 

The very ballet-girls with their muslin saucers round 
them, were perhaps little short of miraculous ; whirling 
and spinning there in strange mad vortexes, and then 
suddenly fixing themselves motionless, each upon her 
left or right great-toe, with the other leg stretched out 
at an angle of ninety degrees, — as if you had suddenly 
pricked into the floor, by one of their points, a pair, or 
rather a multitudinous cohort, of mad restlessly jump- 
ing and clipping scissors, and so bidden them rest, with 
open blades, and stand still, in the Devil's name ! 
—M. The Opera. 

THE PUBLIC SPEAKER. 

Was it never thy hard fortune, good Reader, to attend 
any Meeting convened for Public purposes ; any Bible- 
Society, Reform, Conservative, Thatched-Tavern, Hogg 
Dinner, or other such Meeting ? Thou hast seen some 
full-fed Long-ear, by free determination, or on sweet con- 
straint, start to his legs, and give voice. Well aware 
wert thou that there was not, had not been, could not 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



43 



be, in that entire ass-cranium of his any fraction of an 
idea : nevertheless mark him. If at first an ominous 
haze flit round, and nothing, not even nonsense, dwell 
in his recollection, — heed it not ; let him but plunge 
desperately on, the spell is broken. Commonplaces 
enough are at hand : ' labour of love,' 'rights of suffer- 
ing millions,' * throne and altar,' 'divine gift of song,' 
or what else it may be ; the Meeting by its very name, 
has environed itself in a given element of Commonplace. 
But anon, behold how his talking-organs get heated, 
and the friction vanishes; cheers, applauses, with the 
previous dinner and strong drink, raise him to height 
of noblest temper. And now, as for your vociferous 
Dullard is easiest of all, let him keep on the soft, safe 
parallel course ; parallel to Truth, or nearly so ; for 
Heaven's sake, not in cojitact with it : no obstacle will 
meet him ; on the favouring given element of Common- 
place he triumphantly careers. He is as the ass, whom 
you took and cast headlong into the water : the water 
at first threatens to swallow him ; but he finds, to his 
astonishment, that he can sivtJii therein, that it is buoy- 
ant and bears him along. One sole condition is indis- 
pensable : audacity, vulgarly called impudence. Our 
ass must commit himself to his watery ' element ; ' in 
free daring, strike forth his four limbs from him: then 
shall he not drown and sink, but shoot gloriously for- 
ward, and swim, to the admiration of bystanders. The 
ass, safe landed on the other bank, shakes his rough 
hide, wonder-struck himself at the faculty that lay in 
him, and waves joyfully his long ears : so too the pub- 
lic speaker. — M. Cagliostro. 

DANDIES. 

Touching Dandies, let us consider, with some scien- 
tific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy is 
a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and 
existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every 



44 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



faculty of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically 
consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes 
wisely and well : so that as others dress to live, he lives 
to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, which a Ger- 
man Professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, 
writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has 
sprung-up in the intellect of the Dandy, without effort,, 
like an instinct of genius ; he is inspired with Cloth, a 
Poet of Cloth. What Teufclsdrockh would call a 'Di- 
vine Idea of Cloth ' is born with him ; and this, like 
other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring 
his heart asunder with unutterable throes. But, like 
a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly makes 
his Idea an Action ; shows himself in peculiar guise to 
mankind ; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to 
the eternal Worth of Clothes. We called him a Poet : 
is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he 
writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his 
mistress' eyebrow ? Say, rather, an Epos, and Clotha 
Viriwique cmio, to the whole world, in Macaronic ver- 
ses, which he that runs may read. Nay, if you grant, 
what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy had a 
Thinking-principle in him, and some notions of Time 
and Space, is there not in the Life-devotedness to Cloth, 
in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the Per- 
ishable, something (though in reverse order) of that 
blending and identification of Eternity with Time, which, 
as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, 
and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in 
return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise 
his existence ; would admit him to be a living object ; 
or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will 
reflect rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond 
what the niggardly Law has already secured him) he so- 
licits not ; simply the glance of your eyes. Under- 
stand his mystic significance, or altogether miss and 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. ^i; 

misinterpret it ; do but look at him and he is contented. 
May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, 
which refuses even this poor boon ; which will waste 
its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; 
and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, 
a live Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a 
scarcely concealed contempt ! Him no Zoologist classes 
among the Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care : 
when did we see any injected Preparation of the Dandy 
in our Museums ; any specimen of him preserved in 
spirits ? Lord Herringbone may dress himself in a 
snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt and shoes : it 
skills not; the undiscerning public, occupied with 
grosser wants, passes by regardless on the other side. 
—S. R. III. 10. 

PROFESSOR TEUFELSDROCKII ON THE DANDIACAL 
SECT. 
In these distracted times, writes he, when the Religious 
Principle, driven-out of most Churches, either Hes unseen 
in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and 
silently working there towards some new Revelation ; 
or else wanders homeless over the world, like a disem- 
bodied soul seeking its terrestrial organisation, — into 
how many strange shapes, of Superstition and Fanat- 
icism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast itself! 
The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while 
without Exponent ; yet does it continue indestructible, 
unweariedly active, and work blindly in the great cha- 
otic deep : thus Sect after Sect, and Church after 
Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into new 
metamorphosis. 

Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the 
wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, 
offers precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of 
Darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosi- 
ties are best generated. Among the newer Sects of 
that country, one of the most notable, and closely con- 



46 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

nected with our present subject, is that of the Dandies; 
concerning which, what httle information I have been 
able to procure may fitly stand here. 

It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men gen- 
erally without sense for the Religious Principle, or 
judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief 
enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a 
Secular Sect, and not a Religious one ; nevertheless, to 
the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial 
character plainly enough reveals itself Whether it be- 
longs to the class of Fetish- worships or Hero-worships 
or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may in the present 
state of our intelligence remain undecided {schwebeii). 
A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in the Gnostic 
shape, is discernible enough : also (for human Error 
v/alks in a cycle, and reappears at intervals) a not-in- 
considerable resemblance to that Superstition of the 
Athos Monks, who by fasting from all nourishment, and 
looking intensely for a length of time into their own 
navels, came to discern therein the true Apocalypse of 
Nature and Heaven unveiled. To my own surmise, it 
appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new modi- 
fication, adapted to the new time, of that primeval Su- 
perstition, Sc//- Worship ; which Zerdusht, Quangfout- 
chee, Mohamed, and others, strove rather to subordi- 
nate and restrain than to eradicate ; and which only in 
the purer forms of Religion has been altogether rejected. 
Wherefore, if any one choses to name it revived Ahri- 
manism, or a new figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so 
far as is yet visible, no objection. 

For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of 
a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and 
what force there is in man's nature, though never so en- 
slaved. They affect great purity and separatism ; dis- 
tinguish themselves by a particular costume, (whereof 
some notices were given in the earlier part of this Vol- 
ume) ; likewise, so far as possible, by a particular speech, 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



47 



(apparently some broken Lingua-franca, or English- 
French) ; and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true 
Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves unspotted 
from the world. 

They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the 
Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and 
is named Almack's, a word of uncertain Etymology, 
They worship principally by night ; and have their 
Highpriests and Highpriestesses, who, however, do 
not continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to 
be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian 
or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
Sacred Books wanting to the Sect ; these they call 
Fashionable Novels ; however the Canon is not com- 
pleted, and some are canonical and others not. 

Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, pro- 
cured myself some samples ; and in hope of true in- 
sight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer 
into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But 
wholly to no purpose : that tough faculty of reading, 
for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here 
for the first time foiled and set at nought. In vain 
that I summoned my whole energies (mich weidlich 
anstrc7igte), and did my very utmost ; at the end of 
some short space, I was uniformly seized with not so 
much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind 
of infinite, unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel- 
piping; to which the frightfuUest species of Magnetic 
Sleep soon supervened. And if I strove to shake this 
away, and absolutely would not yield, there came a 
hitherto unfelt sensation, as of Delirium Tremens, and 
a melting into total deliquium : till at last, by order of 
the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual and 
1)odily faculties, and a general breaking-up of the con- 
stitution, I reluctantly but determinedly forebore. Was 
there some miracle at work here ; like those Fire-balls, 
and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case 



48 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



of the Jewish Mysteries, have also more than once 
scared back the AUen ? Be this as it may, such failure 
on my part, after best efforts, must excuse the imper- 
fection of this sketch ; altogether incomplete, yet the 
completest I could give of a Sect too singular to be 
omitted. —S. R. III. lo. 

LA UGHTER. 
How much lies in Laughter : the cipher-key, where- 
with we decipher the whole man ! Some men wear 
an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others 
lies a cold glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter 
and snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, pro- 
duce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were 
laughing through wool : of none such comes good. 
The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, 
stratagems and spoils ; but his whole life is already a 
treason and a stratagem. —S. R. i. 4. 

RIDICULE. 
There are things in this world to be laughed at, as 
well as things to be admired ; and his is no complete 
mind that cannot give to each sort its due. Neverthe- 
less, contempt is a dangerous element to sport in; a 
deadly one, if we habitually live in it. How, indeed, 
to take the lowest view of this matter, shall a man ac- 
complish great enterprises ; enduring all toil, resisting 
temptation, laying aside every weight, — unless he zeal- 
ously love what he pursues ? The faculty of love, of ad- 
miration, is to be regarded as the sign and the measure 
of high souls : unwisely directed, it leads to many evils ; 
but without it, there cannot be any good. . Ridicule, on 
the other hand, is indeed a faculty much prized by its 
possessors ; yet, intrinsically, it is a small faculty ; we 
may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are 
at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly 
opposed to Thought, to Knowledge, properly so called; 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



49 



its nourishment and essence is Denial, which hovers only 
on the surface, while Knowledge dwells far below. 
Moreover, it is by nature selfish and morally trivial ; 
it cherishes nothing but our Vanity, which may in gen- 
eral be left safely enough to shift for itself. Little ' dis- 
course of reason,' in any sense, is implied in Ridicule: 
a scoffing man is in no lofty mood, for the time ; shows 
more of the imp than of the angel. This too when his 
scoffing is what we call just, and has some foundation 
on truth : while again the laughter of fools, that vain 
sound said in Scripture to resemble the ' crackling of 
thorns under the pot' (which they cannot heat, but onl} 
soil and begrime), must be regarded, in these latter 
times, as a very serious addition to the sum of human 
wretchedness ; nor perhaps will it always, when the In- 
crease of Crime in the Metropolis comes to be debated, 
escape the vigilance of ParHament. — ^'/. Voltaire. 

RIDICULE THE TEST OF TRUTH. 
We have, oftener than once, endeavoured to attach 
some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to 
Shaftesbury, which, however, we can find nowhere in 
his works, that Ridicule is the test of truth. But of 
all chimeras that ever advanced themselves in the 
shape of philosophical doctrines, this is to us the most 
formless and purely inconceivable. Did or could the 
unassisted human faculties ever understand it, much 
more believe it ? Surely, so far as the common mind 
can discern, laughter seems to depend not less on the 
laugher than on the laughee : and now, who gave laugh- 
ers a patent to be always just, and always omniscient ? 
If the philosophers of Nootka Sound were pleased to 
laugh at the manoeuvres of Cook's seamen, did that ren- 
der these manoeuvres useless ; and were the seamen to 
stand idle, or to take to leather canoes, till the laughter 
abated ? Let a discerning public judge. —M. Voltaire. 
4 



so 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



NIL ADMIRARl. 
The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually 
wonder (and worship), were he President of innumera- 
ble Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecajiiqite 
Celeste and HegeV.s Philosophy, and the epitome of all 
Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his 
single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which 
there is no eye. Let those who have Eyes look through 
him, then he may be useful. —S. R. I. lo. 

It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he 
can ; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprison- 
ments, were it but for moments, as true admiration. 
—P. dr' P. II. 3. 

HERO-WORSHIP. 
Hero-worship still continues; it is the only creed 
which never and nowhere grows or can grow obsolete. 
For always and everywhere this remains a true saying : 
II y a dans le cceiir hiunain ime fibre religieuse, Man al- 
ways worships something ; always he sees the Infinite 
shadowed forth in something finite ; and indeed can 
and must so see it in a7iy finite thing, once tempt him 
well to fix his eyes thereon. — 

Remark, however, as illustrative of several things, 
that man does in strict speech always remain the clear- 
est symbol of the Divinity to man. Friend Novalis, 
the devoutest heart I know,* and of purest depth, has 
not scrupled to call man, what the Divine Man is called 
in Scripture, a "Revelation in the Flesh." "There is but 
one temple in the world," says he, "and that is the body 
of man. Bending before men is a reverence done to 
this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when 
we lay our hand on a human body." In which nota- 
ble words, a reader that meditates them may find such 
meaning and scientific accuracy as will surprise him. 

— J/. Goethe's Works. 

* This passage pretends to be a quotation from Teufelsdrockh. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 5 I 

Worship of a hero is transcendent admiration of a 
Great Man. I say great men are still admirable ; I say 
there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable ! No nobler 
feeling than this of admiration for one higher than him- 
self dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and 
at all hours, the vivifying influence in man's life. Re- 
ligions I find stand upon it ; not Paganism only, but far 
higher and truer religions, — all religion hitherto known. 
Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate admiration, submis- 
sion, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike Form of 
Man, — is not that the germ of Christianity itself? The 
greatest of all Heroes is One — whom we do not name 
here ! Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter ; 
you will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle ex- 
tant throughout man's whole history on Earth. 
— //. /. Odin. 

THE AGE OF ROMANCE. 
Depend upon it, for one thing, good Reader, no age 
ever seemed the Age of Romance to itself. Charle- 
magne, let the Poets talk as they wnll, had his own 
provocations in the world : what with selling of his 
poultry and pot-herbs, what with wanton daughters 
carrying secretaries through the snow ; and, for in- 
stance, that hanging of the Saxons over the Weser- 
bridge (four thousand of them they say, at one bout), 
it seems to me that the Great Charles had his temper 
ruffled at times. Roland of Roncesvalles too, we see 
well in thinking of it, found rainy weather as well as 
sunny ; knew what it was to have hose need darning ; 
got tough beef to chew, or even went dinnerless ; was 
saddle-sick, calumniated, constipated (as his madness 
too clearly indicates) ; and oftenest felt, I doubt not, 
that this was a very Devil's world, and he, Roland him- 
self, one of the sorriest caitiffs there. Only in long 
subsequent days, when the tough beef, the constipation 
and calumny had clean vanished, did it all begin to 
seem Romantic, and your Turpins and Ariostos found 



52 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



music in it. So I say is it ever ! And the more, as 
your true hero, your true Roland, is ever imconscioiis 
that he is a hero : this is a condition of all greatness. 

— M, Diamond Necklace, I. 

ROMANCE IN REALITY. 
In our own poor Nineteenth Century, the Writer of 
these lines has been fortunate enough to see not a few 
glimpses of Romance ; he imagines the Nineteenth is 
hardly a whit less romantic than that Ninth, or any 
other, since centuries began. Apart from Napoleon, 
and the Dantons, and Mirabeaus, whose fire-words of 
public speaking, and fire-whirlwinds of cannon and 
musketry, which for a season darkened the air, are per- 
haps at bottom but superficial phenomena, he has wit- 
nessed, in remotest places, much that could be called 
romantic, even miraculous. He has witnessed overhead 
the infinite Deep, with greater and lesser lights, bright- 
rolling, silent-beaming, hurled forth by, the Hand of 
God : around him and under his feet, the wonderfullest 
Earth, with her winter snow-storms and her summer 
spice-airs ; and unaccountablest of all, himself standing 
there. He stood in the lapse of Time ; he saw Eternity 
behind him, and before him. The all-encircling myste- 
rious tide of Force, thousandfold (for from force of 
Thought to force of Gravitation what an interval !) bil- 
lowed shoreless on; bore him too along with it, — he too 
was part of it. From its bosom rose and vanished, in 
perpetual change, the lordliest Real-Phantasmagory, 
which men name Being ; and ever anew rose and van- 
ished ; and ever that lordliest many-coloured scene was 
full, another yet the same. Oak-trees fell, young acorns 
sprang : Men too, new-sent from the Unknown, he met, 
of tiniest size, who waxed into stature, into strength of 
sinew, passionate fire and light; in other men the light 
was growing dim, the sinews all feeble ; then sank, mo- 
tionless, into ashes, into invisibility; returned baek to the 
Unknown, beckoning him their mute farewell. He 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



53 



wanders still by the parting-spot; cannot hear them; 
they are far, how far ! — It was a sight for angels and 
archangels ; for, indeed, God himself had made it 
wholly. One many-glancing asbestos-thread in the 
Web of Universal-History, spirit- woven, it rustled there, 
as with the howl of mighty winds, through that ' wild- 
roaring Loom of Time.' Generation after generation, 
hundreds of them or thousands of them, from the un- 
known Beginning, so loud, so stormful-busy, rushed 
torrent-wise thundering down, down ; and fell all silent, 
— nothing but some feeble re-echo, which grew ever 
feebler, struggling up ; and Oblivion swallowed them 
all. Thousands more, to the unknown Ending, will fol- 
low : and thou here, of this present one, hangest as a 
drop, still sungilt, on the giddy edge ; one moment, 
while the Darkness has not yet engulfed thee. O 
Brother ! is tJiat what thou callest prosaic ; of small 
interest ? Of small interest and for thee ? —M. Diamotm 
Necklace, I. 

NOTHING INSIGNIFICANT. 

Detached, separated ! I say there is no such separa- 
tion : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; 
but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together 
with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless 
flood of Action, and lives through perpetual metamor- 
phoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, there 
are Forces in it and around it, though working in in- 
verse order; else how could it I'otf Despise not the 
rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from 
which the Earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no 
meanest object is insignificant ; all objects are as win- 
dows, through which the philosophic eye looks into 
Infinitude itself —S. I^. I. ii. 

CUSTOM. 

Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks 
of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is 



54 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLO'GY. 



her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by 
simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is 
by this means we live ; for man must work as well as 
wonder: and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, 
guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond fool- 
ish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, when, 
in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong the same 
deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with stupid 
indifference, because I have seen it twice, or two hun- 
dred, or two million times? There is no reason in 
Nature or in Art why I should : unless, indeed, I am a 
mere Work- Machine, for whom the divine gift of 
Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift of 
Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a power whereby Cotton 
might be spun, and money and money's worth reahsed. 
—S. R. III. 8. 

THE RESUL TS OF MAN'S A CTIVITY AND A TTAINMENT. 

Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are 
aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only : such 
are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they 
rest. on ; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-Habits 
and of Soul-Habits ; much more his collective stocly of 
Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has acquired of 
manipulating Nature : all these things, as indispensable 
and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be fixed 
under lock-and-key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impal- 
pable vehicles, from Father to Son ; if you demand 
sight of them, they are nowhere to be met with. 
Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been, 
ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards ; but where 
does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and 
other Manufacturing Skill lie warehoused? It trans- 
mits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by 
Hearing and by Vision) ; it is a thing aeriform, impal- 
pable, of quite spiritual sort. —S. R. II. 8. 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. ^^ 

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MANKIND. 

Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible 
whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects 
and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. 
As palpable life-streams in that wondrous Individual 
Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not 
palpable, flow-on those main-currents of what we call 
Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Politics, Churches, 
above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and 
know that a Thought did never yet die ; that as thou, 
the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it 
from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the 
whole Future. It is thus that the heroic Heart, the 
seeing Eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us 
of the latest ; that the wise man stands ever encompassed, 
and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and 
brothers ; and there is a living, literal Comrminimi of 
Saints, wide as the World itself, and as the History of 
the World. —S. R. III. 7. 

THE GENERA TIONS OF MANKIND. 

Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind : 
Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, 
that summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed 
for new advancement. What the- Father has made, the 
Son can make and enjoy ; but has also work of his own 
appointed him. Thus all things wax, and roll onwards ; 
Arts, Establishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, 
but ever completing. —S. R. III. 7. 

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 
The Past is a dim, indubitable fact : the Future too is 
one, only dimmer ; nay properly it is the same fact in 
new dress and development. For the Present holds in 
it both the whole Past and the whole Future; as the 
Life-tree Igdrasil, wide waving, many-toned, has 
its roots down deep in the Death-Kingdoms, among the 
oldest dead dust of men, and with its boughs reaches 



56 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

always beyond the stars ; and in all times and places is 
one and the same Life- tree ! —P. 6^ P. i. 6. 

BEGINNINGS. 
Apart from all Transcendentalism, is it not a plain 
truth of sense, which the duller mind can even consider 
as a truism, that human things wholly are in continual 
movement, and action and reaction ; working continu- 
ally forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, 
towards prescribed issues ? How often must we say, 
and yet not rightly lay to heart : the seed that is sown, 
it will spring ! Given the summer's blossoming, then 
there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it or- 
dered not with seed-fields only, but with transactions, 
arrangements, philosophies, societies, French Revolu- 
tions, whatsoever man works with in this lower world. 
The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads 
thereto ; as the acorn does the oak and its fortunes. 
Solemn enough, did we think of it, — which unhappily, 
and also happily, we do not very much ! Thou there 
canst begin ; the Beginning is for thee, and there ; but 
where, and of what sort, and for whom will the End be ? 
—F. R., Part II., B. III. i. 

LIFE A DREAM. 
We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream- 
grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, the remotest 
century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: sounds 
and many-coloured visions flit round our sense ; but 
Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and 
Dreamer are, we see not; except in rare half- waking 
moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before 
us, like a glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that made it 
lies behind us, hidden from us. Then in that strange 
Dream, how we clutch at shadows, as if they were sub- 
stances ; and sleep deepest while fancying ourselves 
most awake ! — This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is 
what we on Earth call Life ; wherein the most indeed 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. ^7 

undoubtingly wander, as if they knew right hand from 
left ; yet they only are wise who know that they know 
nothing. —S. R. I. 8. 

THE PASSAGE OF MANKIND. 
Generation after generation takes to itself the Form 
of a Body ; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, 
on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire 
is in each he expends : one grinding in the mill of In- 
dustry ; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine 
heights of Science ; one madly dashed to pieces on the 
rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow : — and then the 
Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly Vesture falls away, 
and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. 
Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of 
Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND 
thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding 
grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, a God- 
created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the 
Inane ; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth ; 
then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains 
are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage : 
can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist 
Spirits which have reality and are alive ? On the 
hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped-in ; 
the last Rear of the host will read traces of the Earliest 
Van. But whence ? O Heaven, whither ? Sense 
knows not ; Faith knows not ; only that it is through 
Mystery to Mystery, from God to God. 

"We are such stuff 
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep ! " —S. R. III. 8. 

CHILDHOOD. 
Happy season of Childhood ! Kind Nature, that art 
to all a bountiful Mother ; that visited the poor man's 
hut with auroral radiance ; and for thy Nursling hast 
provided a soft swathing of Love and infinite Hope, 



58 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round by 
sweetest Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage still shuts 
us in, its roof still screens us ; with a Father we have 
as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience 
that makes us Free. The young spirit has awakened 
out of Eternity, and knows not what we mean by 
Time ; as yet Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a 
sportful sunlit ocean ; years to the child are as ages : 
ah ! the secret of Vicissitude, of that slower or iquicker 
decay and ceaseless down -rushing of the universal 
World-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man or 
day-moth, is yet unknown ; and in a motionless Uni- 
verse, we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling 
Universe is forever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep 
on, thou fair Child, for thy long rough journey is at 
hand ! A little while, and thou too shalt sleep no 
more, but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles ; thou 
too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say in stern pa- 
tience : " Rest ? Rest ? Shall I not have all Eternity 
to rest in ? " Celestial Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus 
conquers empires, and an Alexander sack the world, 
he finds thee not ; and thou hast once fallen gently, of 
thy own accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of every 
mother's child. For as yet, sleep and waking are one : 
the fair Life- garden rustles infinite around, and every- 
where is dewy fragrance, and the budding of Hope ; 
which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to 
flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a prickly, 
bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find 
the kernel. —S. R. II. 2. 

DEA TH. 

I HAVE now pitched my tent under a Cypress-tree ; 
the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fortress, ever close 
by the gate of which I look upon the hostile armaments, 
and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life placidly 
enou":h, and listen to its loudest threatenings with a still 



LIFE, AND THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 



59 



smile. O ye loved ones, that already sleep in the noise- 
less Bed of Rest, whom in life I could only weep for 
and never help ; and ye, who wide-scattered still toil 
lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing the flinty 
ground with your blood, — yet a little while, and we shall 
all meet THERE, and our Mother's bosom will screen us 
all ; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire- whip, 
and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit 
ever- vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more ! 
—s. R. II. 3. 



II. 

PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



GREA T MEN. 
Great men are the Fire-pillars in this dark pilgrimage 
of mankind ; they stand as heavenly Signs, everlasting 
witnesses of what has been, prophetic tokens of what 
may still be, the revealed embodied Possibilities of hu- 
man nature ; which greatness he who has never seen, 
or rationally conceived of, and with his whole heart 
passionately loved and reverenced, is himself forever 
doomed to be little. How many weighty reasons, how 
many innocent allurements attract our curiosity to such 
men ! We would know them, see them visibly, even 
as we know and see our like : no hint, no notice that 
concerns them is superfluous or too small for us. Were 
Gulliver's Conjuror but here, to- recall and sensibly 
bring back the brave Past, that we might look into it, 
and scrutinise it at will ! But alas, in Nature there is 
no such conjuring : the great spirits that have gone be- 
fore us can survive only as disembodied Voices ; their 
form and distinctive aspect, outward and even in many 
respects inward, all whereby they were known as living, 
breathing men, has passed into another sphere ; from 
which only History, in scanty memorials, can evoke 
some faint resemblance of it. The more precious, in 



64 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

spite of all imperfections, is such History, are such 
memorials, that still in some degree preserve what had 
otherwise been lost without recovery. —M. Schiller. 

DANTE. 

Many volumes have been written by way of commen- 
tary on Dante and his Book : yet, on the whole, with 
no great result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecov- 
erably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrow- 
stricken man, not much note was taken of him while 
he lived ; and the most of that has vanished, in the 
long space that now intervenes. It is five centuries 
since he ceased writing and living here. After all com- 
mentaries, the Book itself is mainly what we know of 
him. The Book ; — and one might add that Portrait 
commonly attributed to Giotto, which, looking on it, 
you cannot help inclining to think genuine, whoever 
did it. To me it is a most touching face : perhaps of all 
faces that I know, the most so. Lonely there, painted 
as on vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; 
the deathless sorrow and pain, the known victory which 
is also deathless ; — significant of the whole history of 
Dante ! I think it is the mournfullest face that ever 
was painted from reality ; an altogether tragic, heart- 
affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the 
softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child ; but 
all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into 
abnegation, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft 
ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim- 
trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! 
Withal it is a silent pain too ; a silent scornful one : the 
lip is curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing 
that is eating-out his heart, — as if it were withal a mean 
insignificant thing, as if he whom it had power to tor- 
ture and strangle were greater than it. The face of one 
wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering battle, 
against the world. Aflection all converted into indig- 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. g^ 

nation : an implacable indignation ; slow, equable, silent, 
like that of a god ! The eye too, it looks-out as in a 
kind oi surprise, a kind of inquiry, Why the world was 
of such a sort ? This is Dante : so he looks, this ' voice 
of ten silent centuries,' and sings us 'his mystic unfath- 
omable song.* —H. III. 

HIS INTENSITY. ^ 

Perhaps one would say, intejisity, with the much that 
depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's 
genius. Dante does not come before us as a large cath- 
olic mind ; rather as a narrow, and even sectarian 
mind : it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but 
partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all 
senses, concentred itself into fiery emphasis and depth. 
He is world-great not because he is world-wide, but be- 
cause he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces 
as it were down into the heart of Being. I know noth- 
ing so intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to 
begin with the outermost development of his intensity, 
consider how he paints. He has a great power of vis- 
ion ; seizes the very type of a thing ; presents that and 
nothing more. You remember that first view he gets 
of the Hall of Dite : red pinnacle, redhot cone of iron 
glowing through the dim immensity of gloom ; — so 
vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever ! It is as 
an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a 
brevity, an abrupt precision in him : Tacitus is not 
briefer, more condensed ; and then in Dante it seems a 
natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One 
smiting word ; and then there is silence, nothing more 
said. His silence is more eloquent than woi^ds. It is 
strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches 
the true likeness of a matter ; cuts into the matter as 
with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, col- 
lapses at Virgil's rebuke ; it is ' as the sails sink, the 
mast being suddenly broken.' Or that poor Brunette 

5 



55 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Latini, with the cotto aspetto, ' face baked,' parched 
brown and lean ; and the ' fiery snow ' that falls on 
them there, a ' fiery snow without wind,' slow, deliber- 
ate, never-ending ! Or the lids of those Tombs ; square 
sarcophaguses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each 
with its Soul in torment ; the lids laid open there ; they 
are to be shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eter- 
nity. And how Farinata rises; and how Cavalcante 
falls — at hearing of his son, and the past tense 'fue ! ' 
The very movements in Dante have something brief; 
swift, decisive, almost military. It is of the inmost es- 
sence of his genius this sort of painting. The fiery, 
swift Italian nature of the .man, so silent, passionate, 
with its quick abrupt movements, its silent ' pale rages,' 
speaks itself in these things. — ^. ///. 

I//S TENDERNESS. 

Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and 
of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on the 
wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the outcome of 
a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what qualities 
in that ! A thing woven as out of rainbows, on a 
ground of eternal black. A small flute- voice of infinite 
wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A 
touch of womanhood in it too : dclla bella persona, che 
mi fu tolta ; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a 
solace that he will never part from her ! Saddest trag- 
edy in these alti giiai. And the racking winds, in that 
aer bruno, whirl them away again, to wail forever ! — 
Strange ta think : Dante was the friend of this pf)or 
Francesca's father ; Francesca herself may have sat 
upon the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. 
Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law: it is so Nat- 
ure is made ; it is so'Dante discerned that she was made. 
What a paltry notion is that of his Divine Comedy's be- 
ing a poor splenetic impotent terrestrial libel; putting 
those into Hell whom he could not be avenged upon 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



67 



on Earth ! I suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, 
was in the heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a 
man who does not know rigour cannot pity either. His 
very pity will be cowardly, egoistic, — sentimentality, or 
little better. I know not in the world an affection equal 
to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, long- 
ing, pitying love ; like the wail of ^olean harps, soft, 
soft ; like a child's young heart ; — and then that stern, 
sore-saddened heart ! These longings of his towards 
his Beatrice ; their meeting together in the Paradiso ; 
his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had 
been purified by death so long, separated from him so 
far: — one likens it to the song of angels; it is among 
the purest utterances of affection, perhaps the very 
purest, that ever came out of a human soul. —H. III. 

DANTE AND SHAKSPEARE. 

As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to 
embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the 
Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life ; so Shak- 
speare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of 
our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, 
humours, ambitions, what practical way of thinking, 
acting, looking at the world, men then had. As in 
Homer we may still construe Old Greece : so in Shak- 
speare and Dante, after thousands of years, what our 
modern Europe was, in Faith and in Practice, will still be 
legible. Dante has given us the Faith or soul ; Shak- 
speare, in a not less noble way, has given us the Prac- 
tice or body. This latter also we were to have ; a man 
was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when that 
chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and was 
on the p 3int of breaking down into slow or swift disso- 
lution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sov- 
ereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial 
singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long- 
enduring record of it. Two fit men : Dante, deep, 



58 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

fierce as the central fire of the world ; Shalc^peare, wide, 
placid, far-seeing as the Sun, the upper light of the 
world. Italy produced the one world-voice ; we En- 
glish have the honour of producing the other. —H. III. 

SHAKSPEARE. HIS SUPREMACY. 
Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one 
sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is in 
fact the right one ; I think the best judgment not of 
this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly 
pointing to the conclusion. That Shakspeare is the 
chief of all Poets hitherto ; the greatest intellect who, 
in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the 
way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a 
power of vision, such a faculty of thought,' if we take 
all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calm- 
ness of depth ; placid joyous strength ; all things im- 
aged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a 
tranquil, unfathomable sea ! It has been said that in 
the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart 
from all other ' faculties ' as they are called, an under- 
standing manifested, equal to that in Bacon's Novutn 
Orgamun. That is true ; and it is not a truth that 
strikes every one. It would become more apparent if 
we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's 
dramatic materials, we could fashion such a result ! The 
built house seems all so fit, — everyway as it should be, 
as if it came there by its own law and the nature of 
things, — we forget the rude disorderly quarry it was 
shaped from. The very perfection of the house, as if 
Nature herself had made it, hides the builder's merit. 
Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may call 
Shakspeare in this ; he discerns, knows as by instinct, 
what condition he works under, what his materials are, 
what his own force and its relation to them is. It is 
not a transitory glance of insight that will suffice ; it is 
deliberate illumination of the whole matter; it is a 
calmly seeing eye ; a great intellect in short.— ^. ///. 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 69 

HIS UNIVERSALITY. 
Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Por- 
trait-painting, delineating of men and things, especially 
of men, that Shakspeare is great. All the greatness of 
the man comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, 
I think, that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. 
The thing he looks at reveals not this or that face of it, 
but its inmost heart, and generic secret : it dissolves it- 
self as in light before him, so that he discerns the per- 
fect structure of it. Creative, we said: poetic creation, 
W'hat is this too but seeing the thing sufficiently ? The 
word that will describe the thing, follows of itself from 
such clear intense sight of the thing. And is not Shak- 
speare's morality, his valour, candour, tolerance, truth- 
fulness ; his whole victorious strength and greatness, 
which can triumph-over such obstacles, visible there 
too ? Great as the world ! No tiuisted, poor convex- 
concave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own con- 
vexities and concavities ; a perfectly level mirror ; — 
that is to say withal, if we will understand it, a man 
justly related to all things and men, a good man. It is 
truly a lordly spectacle how this great soul takes-in all 
kinds of men and objects, a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, 
a Coriolanus ; sets them all forth to us in their round 
completeness ; loving, just, the equal brother of all. 
Noviun Organitin, and all the intellect you will find in 
Bacon, is of a quite secondary order ; earthy, material, 
poor in comparison with this. —H. ill. 

HIS TRANQUILLITY, AND MIRTHFULNESS. 

Withal the joyous tranquillity of this man is notable 
I will not blame Dante for his misery : it is as a battle 
without victory ; but true battle, — the first indispensa- 
ble thing. Yet I call Shakspeare great*er that Dante, 
in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, 
he had his own sorrows : those Sonnets of his will even 
testify expressly in what deep watei^s he had waded, 



70 



THE CARLYLE ANTIIOLOGy. 



and swum struggling for his life ; — as what man like 
him ever failed to have to do ? It seems to me a heed- 
less notion, our common one, that he sat like a bird on 
the bough ; and sang forth, free and offhand, never 
knowing the troubles of other men. Not so ; with no 
man is it so. How could a man travel forward from 
rustic dear-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not 
fall in with sorrows by the way ? Or, still better, how 
could a man delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Mac- 
beth, so many suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic 
heart had never suffered ? 

And now, in contrast with all this, observe his mirth- 
fulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter ! You 
would say, in no point does he exaggej'ate but only in 
laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and 
burn, are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet he is always 
in measure here ; never what Johnson would remark 
as a specially ' good. hater.' But. his laughter seems to 
pour from him in floods; , he heaps all manner of ridic- 
ulous nicknames on the butt he is bantering, tumbles 
and tosses him in all sorts. of horse-play ; you would 
say, roars and laughs. And then, if not always the 
finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere 
weakness, at misery or poyerty ; never. No man who 
can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these 
things. It is some poor character only desiring to 
laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laugh- 
ter means sympathy ; good laughter is not ' the crack- 
ling of thorns under the pot.' Even at stupidity and 
pretension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than 
genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts ; 
and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laugh- 
ter : but we like the poor fellows only the better for our 
laughing ; and hope they will get on well there, and 
continue Presidents of the City- watch. Such laughter, 

like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. 
—H. III. 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



71 



HIS CA THOLIC SPIRIT. 
Shakspeare is no sectarian ; to all he deals with 
equit)^ and mercy ; because he knows all, and his heart 
is wide enough for all. In his mind the world is a 
whole ; he figures it as Providence governs it ; and to 
him it is not strange that the sun should be caused to 
shine on the evil and the good, and the rain to fall on 
the just and the unjust. —M. Goethe. 

LUTHER. 

RiCHTER says of Luther's words, ' his words are half- 
battles.' They may be called so. The essential quality 
of him was, that he could fight and conquer ; that he 
was a right piece of human Valour. No more valiant 
man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that one has 
record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose 
character is valour. His defiance of the * Devils ' in 
Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if 
now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there 
were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually 
besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this turns 
up ; and a most small sneer has been grounded on it 
by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat 
translating the Bible, they still show you a black spot 
on the wall ; the strange memorial of one of these con- 
flicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms ; he 
was worn down with long labour, with sickness, absti- 
nence from food : there rose before him some hideous 
indefinable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to 
forbid his work; Luther started up, with fiend-defiance; 
flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared ! 
The spot still remains there ; a curious monument of 
several things. Any apothecary's apprentice can now 
tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a sci- 
entific sense : but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, 
face to face, against Hell itself, can give no higher 
proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before. 



72 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



exists not on this Earth or under it. — Fearless enough! 
'The Devil is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that 
this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen 
and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,' of Leip- 
zig, a great enemy of his, ' Duke George is not equal 
to one Devil,' far short of a Devil ! ' If I had business 
at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained 
Duke-Georges for nine days running.' What a reser- 
voir of Dukes to ride into ! —H. IV. 

LUTHER'S PORTRAIT. 

Luther's face is to me expressive of him ; in Kra- 
nach's best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude, 
plebeian face ; with its huge crag- like brows and bones, 
the emblem of rugged energy ; at first, almost a repul- 
sive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild 
silent sorrow ; an unnamable melancholy, the element 
of all gentle and fine affections ; giving to the rest the 
true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this Luther, 
as we said ; but tears also were there. Tears also were 
appointed him ; tears and hard toil. The basis of his 
life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days, after 
all triumphs and^victories, he expresses himself heartily 
weary of living ; he considers that God alone can and 
will regulate the course things are taking, and that per- 
haps the Day of Judgment is not far. As for him, he 
longs for one thing: that God would release him from 
his labour, and let him depart and be at rest. They 
understand little of the man who cite this in ^wcredit 
of him ! — I will call this Luther a true Great Man ; 
great in intellect, in courage, affection and integrity ; 
one of our most lovable and precious men. Great, not 
as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain, — so 
simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up to be great 
at all ; there for quite another purpose than being 
great ! Ah yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and 
v/ide into the Heavens ; yet in the clefts of it fountains, 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



73 



green beautiful valleys with flowers ! A right Spiritual 
Hero and Prophet; once more, a true Son of Nature 
and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are 
to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven. —H. IV. 

JOHN KMOX. 

Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sin- 
cere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied 
anywhere that this, whatever might be his other quali- 
ities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a sin- 
gular instinct he holds to the truth and fact ; the truth 
alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and de- 
ceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality 
may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand. 
In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and 
others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had 
been sent as Galley-slaves, — some officer or priest, one 
day, presented them an Image of the Virgin Mother, 
* requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should 
do it reverence. Mother ? Mother of God ? said Knox, 
when the turn came to him: This is no Mother of God : 
this is *a pented bi'cdd', — a piece of wood, I tell you, 
with paint on it ! She is fitter for swimming, I think, 
than for being worshipped, added Knox : and flung the 
thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting 
there : but come of it what might, this thing to Knox 
was and must continue nothing other than the real 
truth; it was 2i pented bredd : worship it he would not. 
He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to be 
of courage ; the Cause they haci was the true one, and 
must and would prosper; the whole world could not 
put it down. Reality is of God's making ; it is alone 
strong. How many pented bredds, pretending to be 
real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped ! — This 
Knox cannot live but by fact : he clings to reality as 
the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff He is an instance to 
us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic : it is 



74 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good hon- 
est intellectual talent, no transcendent one; — a narrow, 
inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther : but in 
heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as 
we say, he has no superior; nay, one might say, What 
equal he has ? The heart of him is of the true Prophet 
cast. " He lies there," said the Earl of Morton at his 
grave, " who never feared the face of man." He resem- 
bles more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew 
Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid nar- 
row-looking adherence to God's truth, stern rebuke in 
the name of God to all that forsake truth : an Old- 
Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister 
of the Sixteenth Century. We are to take him for 
that ; not require him to be other. —H. IV. 

GEORGE FOX. 

Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern His- 
tory, says Teufelsdrockh, is not the Diet of Worms, 
still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or 
any other Battle ; but an incident passed carelessly over 
by most Historians, and treated with some degree of 
ridicule by others : namely, George Fox's making to 
himself a suit of Leather. This man, the first of the 
Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, 
to whom, under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea 
of the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and across 
all the hulls of Ignorance and Earthly Degradation, 
shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, unspeakable 
Beauty, on their souls : who therefore are rightly ac- 
counted Prophets, God-possessed ; or even Gods, as 
in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall ; 
working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, 
rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, 
this youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit belonging 
to him ; also an antique Inspired Volume, through 
which, as through a window, it could look upwards, 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



75 



and discern its celestial Home. The task of a daily 
pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect of vict- 
uals, and an honourable Mastership in Cordwainery, and 
perhaps the part of Thirdborough in his Hundred, as 
the crown of long faithful sewing, — was nowise satisfac- 
tion enough to such a mind : but ever amid the boring 
and hammering came tones from that far off country, 
came Splendours and Terrors ; for this poor Cord- 
wainer, as we said, was a Man ; and the Temple of Im- 
mensity, wherein as Man he had been sent to minister, 
was full of holy mystery to him. 

The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained 
Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, 
listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, 
and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 
" drink beer and dance with the girls." Blind leaders 
of the blind ! For what end were their tithes levied 
and eaten : for what were their shovel-hats scooped-out, 
and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt-on ; and 
such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, 
and other racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth, 
— if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly 
with its adjuncts the grand Reality ? Fox turned from 
them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather- 
parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, 
higher than ^tna, had been heaped over that Spirit: 
but it was^ a Spirit, and would not lie buried there. 
Through long days and nights of silent agony, it strug- 
gled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be free : how 
its prison-mountains heaved and swayed tumultuously, 
as the giant spirit shook them to this hand and that, and 
emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Leicester 
shoe-shop, had men known it, was a holier place than 
any Vatican or Loretto-shrine. — "So bandaged, and 
hampered, and hemmed in," groaned he, " with thou- 
sand requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tag- 
rags, I can neither see nor move : not my own am I, 



76 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



but the World's ; and Time flies fast, and Heaven is 
high and Hell is deep : Man ! bethink thee, if thou hast 
power of Thought ! Why- not ; what binds me here ? 
Want, want ! — Ha, of what ? Will all the shoe- wages 
under the Moon ferry me across into that far Land of 
Light ? Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to 
God, I will to the woods : the hollow of a tree will 
lodge me, wild-berries will feed me ; and for Clothes, 
cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather ! " 

Historical Oil-painting, continues Teufelsdrockh, is 
one of the Arts I never practised ; therefore shall I not 
decide whether this subject were easy of execution on 
the canvas. Yet often has it seemed to me as if such 
first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and 
more into Day, the chaotic Night that threatened to en- 
gulf him in its hinderances and its horrors, were properly 
the only grandeur there is in History. Let some living 
Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding 
heart, picture George Fox on that morning, when he 
spread-out his cutting-board for the last time, and cuts 
cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches them to- 
gether into one continuous all-including Case, the fare- 
well service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: 
every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the 
heart of Slavery, and World- worship, and the Mammon- 
god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, 
and every stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, 
within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, 
into lands of true Liberty ; were the work done, there 
is in broad Europe one Free Man, and thou art he ! 

Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 
loftiest height ; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been 
published. Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illus- 
trious namesake, Diogenes was the greatest man of 
Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by 
stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Mod- 
erns; and greater than Diogenes himself: for he toe 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 77 

stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting 
aside all props and shoars ; yet not, in half-savage 
Pride, undervaluing the Earth ; valuing it rather, as a 
place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heaven- 
ward from his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy 
and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's 
Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that Tub ; 
a temple from which man's dignity and divinity was 
scornfully preached abroad : but greater is the Leather 
Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, and not 
in scorn but in Love. —S. J?. III. i. 

MAHOMET. 

One other circumstance we must not forget : that he 
had no school-learning ; of the thing we call school- 
learning none at all. The art of writing was but just 
introduced into Arabia ; it seems to be the true opinion 
that Mahomet never could write ! Life in the Desert, 
with its experiences, was all his education. What of 
this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, with his 
own eyes and thoughts, could take-in, so much and no 
more of it was he to know. Curious, if we will reflect 
on it, this of having no books. Except by what he 
could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumour 
of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know 
nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at 
a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as 
good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, 
flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one 
directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone 
there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness ; has 
to grow up so, — alone with Nature and his own 
Thoughts. 

But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a 
thoughtful man. His companions named him ' Al 
Amin,, The Faithful.' A man of truth and fidelity; 
true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. 



78 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



They noticed that he always meant something. A man 
rather taciturn in speech ; silent when there was nothing 
to be said ; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when he did 
speak ; always throwing light on the matter. This is 
the only sort of speech ivorth speaking ! Through life 
we find him to have been regarded as an altogether 
solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincere char- 
acter ; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose even; 
— a good laugh in him withal : there are men whose 
laugh is as untrue as anything about them ; who cannot 
laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty : his fine sa- 
gacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming 
black eyes ; — I somehow like too that vein on the brow, 
which swelled-up black when he was in anger : like the 
^horse-shoe vein' in Scott's Redgmintlct. It was a kind 
of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling 
vein in the brow ; Mahomet had it prominent, as would 
appear. A spontaneous, passionate, yet just, true- 
meaning man ! Full of wild faculty, fire and light ; of 
wild worth, all uncultured, working-out his life-task in 
the depths of the Desert there. —H. il. 

HIS SINCERITY. 

I DO not assert Mahomet's continual sincerity : who is 
continually sincere ? But I confess I can make nothing 
of the critic, in these times, who would accuse him of 
deceit prepense ; of conscious deceit generally, or per- 
haps at all ; — still more of living in a mere element of 
conscious deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger and 
juggler would have done ! Every candid eye, I think, 
will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It is the 
confused ferment of a great rude human soul ; rude, 
untutored, that cannot even read ; but fervent, earnest, 
struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a 
kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; 
the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell : for very multi- 
tude of things to say, he can get nothing said. The 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



79 



meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of 
composition, is stated in no sequence, method or coher- 
ence ; — they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of 
his: flung-out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble 
there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. We said 'stu- 
pid : ' yet natural stupidity is by no means the character 
of Mahomet's Book ; it is natural uncultivation rather. 
The man has not studied speaking ; in the haste and 
pressure of continual fighting, has not time to mature 
himself into fit speech. The panting breathless haste 
and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of bat- 
tle for life and salvation ; this is the mood he is in ! A 
headlong haste ; for very magnitude of meaning, he 
cannot get himself articulated into words. The suc- 
cessive utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by 
the various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years ; now 
well uttered ; now worse : this is the Koran. —H. II. 

HIS WA Y OF LIFE. 

Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, 
was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we con- 
sider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly 
on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoyments of any kind. 
His household was of the frugallest; his common diet 
barley-bread and water: sometimes for months there 
was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record 
with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, 
patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided 
man ; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad 
man, I should say ; something better in him than hicn- 
ger of any sort, — or these wild Arab men, fighting and 
jostling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close 
contact with him always, would not have reverenced 
him so ! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon 
into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity ; without 
rifrht worth and manhood, no man could have com- 
manded them. They called him Prophet, you say ? 



3o THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Why, he stood there face to face with them ; bare, not 
enshrined in any mystery ; visibly clouting his own 
cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fighting, counselling, 
ordering in the midst of them : they must have seen 
what kind of man he ivas, let him be called what you 
like ! No empepor with his tiaras was obeyed as this 
man in a tloak of his own clouting. During three-and- 
twenty years of rough actual trial. I find something 
of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of itself —H. II. 

CROMWELL, HAMPDEN, ELIOT, PYM. 

For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinu- 
ate a word of disparagement against such characters as 
Hampden, Eliot, Pym ; whom I believe to have been 
right worthy and useful men. I have read diligently 
what books and documents about them I could come 
at ; — with the honestest wish to admire, to love and 
worship them like Heroes ; but I am sorry to say, if 
the real truth must be told, with very indifferent suc- 
cess ! At bottom I found that it would not do. They 
are very noble men these ; step along in their stately 
way, with their measured euphuisms, philosophies, par- 
liamentary eloquences. Ship-moneys, Monarchies of 
Man; a most constitutional, unblamable, dignified set 
of men. But the heart remains cold before them ; the 
fancy alone endeavours to get-up some worship of 
them. What man's heart does, in reality, break-forth 
into any fire of brotherly love for these men ? They 
are become dreadfully dull men ! One breaks-down 
often enough in the constitutional eloquence of the ad- 
mirable Pym, with his 'seventhly and lastly.' You find 
that it may be the admirablest thing in the world, but 
that it is heavy, — heavy as lead, .barren as brick clay ; 
that, in a word, for you there is little or nothing now 
surviving there ! One leaves all these Nobilities stand' 
ing in their niches of honour : the rugged outcast Crom- 
well, he is the man of them all in whom one still finds 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. gl 

human stuff. The great savage Baresark : he could 
write no euphuistic Monarchy of Man ; did not speak, 
did not work with ghb regularity ; had no straight story 
to tell for himself anywhere. But he stood bare, not 
cased in euphuistic coat-of-mail ; he grappled like a 
giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth 
of things ! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. 
I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other 
sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabiliti£S not a 
few one finds, that are not good for much. Small 
thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who 
would not touch the work but with gloves on. — //. VI. 

OLIVER CROMWELL IN j6jj. 
' His highness,' says Whitlocke, ' was in a rich but 
plain suit — black velvet, with cloak of the same ; about 
his hat a broad band of gold.' Does the reader see 
him ? A rather likely figure, I think. Stands some 
five feet ten or more ; a man of strong, soHd stature, 
and dignified, now partly military carriage : the ex- 
pression of him valour and devout intelligence — energy 
and delicacy on a basis of simplicity. Fifty-four years 
old, gone April last; brown hair and moustache are 
getting gray. A figure of sufficient impressiveness — 
not lovely to the man-milliner species, nor pretending 
to be so. Massive stature; big, massive head, of some- 
what leonine aspect ; wart above the right eyebrow ; 
nose of considerable blunt-aquiline proportions ; strict 
yet copious lips, full of all tremulous sensibilities, and 
also, if need were, of all fiercenesses and rigours ; deep, 
loving eyes — calf them grave, call them stern — looking 
from under those craggy brows as if in lifelong sorrow, 
and yet not thinking it sorrow, thinking it only labour 
and endeavour : on the whole, a right noble Hon-face 
and hero-face ; and to me royal enough. —C. Fart Vll. 
191. 



82 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

CHARLES I. 
It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parlia- 
ment, having vanquished Charles First, had no way of 
making any tenable arrangement with him. The large 
Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independ- 
ents, were most anxious to do so ; anxious indeed as 
for their own existence ; but it could not be. The un- 
happy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court negotia- 
tions, shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being 
de^lt with. A man who, once for all, could not and 
would not understand : — whose thought did not in any 
measure represent to him the real fact of the matter ; 
nay worse, whose word did not at all represent his 
thought. We may say this of him without cruelty, 
with deep pity rather : but it is true and undeniable. 
Forsaken there of all but the name of Kingship, he still, 
finding himself treated wi^h outward respect as a King, 
fancied that he might play off party against party, and 
smuggle himself into his old power of deceiving both. 
Alas, they both discovered that he was deceiving them. 
A man whose word will not inform you at all what he 
means or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. 
You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of 
yours ! The Presbyterians, in their despair, were still 
for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable 
again and again. Not so Cromwell : " For all our 
fighting," says he, " we are to have a little bit of paper?" 
No ! — —H. VI. 

LAUD. 
Poor Laud seems to me to have b«een weak and ill- 
starred, not dishonest ; an unfortunate Pedant rather 
than anything worse. His ' Dreams ' and supersti- 
tions, at which they laugh so, have an affectionate, lov- 
able kind of character. He is like a College-Tutor 
whose whole world is forms, College-rules; whose no- 
tion is that these are the life and safety of the world. 
He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



83 



notion of his, at the head not of a College but of a Na- 
tion, to regulate the most complex deep-reaching in- 
terests of men. He thinks they ought to go by the 
old decent regulations ; nay that their salvation will lie 
in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, 
he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his pur- 
pose ; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of pru- 
dence, no cry of pity : He will have his College-rules 
obeyed by his Collegians ; that first; and till that, noth- 
ing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He would 
have it the world was a College of that kind, and the 
world zc^as not that. Alas, was not his doom stern 
enough ? Whatever wrongs he did, were they not all 
frightfully avenged on him ? —H. VI. 

FRIEDRICH WILHELM, FATHER OF FREDERICK THE 
GREA T. 

He was not tall of stature, this arbitrary King : a florid- 
complexioned, stout-built man ; of serious, sincere, au- 
thoritative face ; his attitudes and equipments very 
Spartan in type. Man of short firm stature.; stands (in 
Pesne's best Portraits of him) at his ease, and yet like a 
tower. Most solid ; " plumb and rather more ; " eyes 
steadfastly awake ; cheeks slightly compressed, too, 
which fling the mouth rather forward ; as if asking si- 
lently, "Anything astir, then ? All right here ?" Face, 
figure and bearing, all in him is expressive of robust 
insight, and direct determination ; of healthy energy, 
practicality, unquestioned authority, — a certain air of 
royalty reduced to its simplest form. The face, in Pict- 
ures by Pesne and others, is not beautiful or agreeable ; 
healthy, genuine, authoritative, is the best you can say 
of it. Yet it may have been, what it is described as 
being, originally handsome. High -enough arched 
brow, rather copious cheeks and jaws ; nose smallish, 
inclining to be stumpy ; large gray eyes, bright with 
steady fire and life, often enough gloomy and severe, 



84 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



but capable of jolly laughter too. Eyes " naturally 
with a kind of laugh in them," says Pollnitz ; — which 
laugh can blaze-out into fearful thunderous rage, if you 
give him provocation. Especially if you lie to him ; 
for that he hates above all things. Look him straight 
in the face : he fancies he can see in your eyes, if there 
is an internal mendacity in you : wherefore you must 
look at him in speaking ; such is his standing order. 

His hair is flaxen, falling into the ashgray or darker ; 
fine copious flowing hair, while he wore it natural. But 
it soon got tied into clubs, in the military style ; and at 
length it was altogether cropped away, and replaced by 
brown, and at last by white, round wigs. Which latter 
also, though bad wigs, became him not amiss, under his 
cocked-hat and cockade, says Pollnitz. The voice, I 
guess, even when not loud, was of clangorous and pen- 
etrating, quasi-metallic nature ; and I learn expressly 
once, that it had a nasal quality in it. His Majesty 
spoke through the nose ; snuffled his speech, in an ear- 
nest ominously plangent manner. In angry moments, 
which were frequent, it must have been — unpleasant 
to listen to. For the rest, a handsome man of his 
inches ; conspicuously well-built in limbs and body, and 
delicately finished-off to the very extremities. His feet 
and legs, says Pollnitz, were very fine. The hands, if 
he would have taken care of them, were beautifully 
white ; fingers long and thin ; a hand at once nimble to 
grasp, delicate to feel, and strong to clutch and hold : 
what may be called a beautiful hand, because it is the 
usefullest. 

Nothing could exceed his Majesty's simplicity of hab- 
itudes. But one loves especially in him his scrupjlous 
attention to cleanliness of person and of environment. 
Pie washed like a very Mussulman, five times a day ; 
loved cleanliness in all things, to a superstitious extent ; 
which trait is pleasant in the rugged man, and indeed 
of a piece with the rest of his character. He is gradu- 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



85 



ally changing all his silk and other cloth room -furniture; 
in his hatred of dust, he will not suffer a floor-carpet, 
even a stuffed chair ; but insists on having all of wood, 
where the dust may be prosecuted to destruction. Wife 
and womankind, and those that take after them, let such 
have stuffing and sofas : he, for his part, sits on mere 
wooden chairs ; — sits, and also thinks and acts, after the 
manner of a Hyperborean Spartan, which he was. He 
ate heartily, but as a rough farmer and hunter eats ; 
country messes, good roast and boiled ; despising the 
French Cook, as an entity without meaning for him. 
His favourite dish at dinner was bacon and greens, 
rightly dressed ; what could the French Cook do for 
such a man ? He ate with rapidity, almost with indis- 
criminate violence ; his object not quality but quantity. 
•He drank too, but did not get drunk ; at the Doctor's 
order he could abstain ; and had in later years abstained. 
Pollnitz praises his fineness of complexion, the originally 
eminent whiteness of his skin, which he had tanned and 
bronzed by hard riding and hunting, and otherwise 
worse discoloured by his manner of feeding and digest- 
ing : alas, at last his waistcoat came to measure, I am 
afraid to say how many Prussian ells, — a very consider- 
able diameter indeed ! 

For some years after his accession, he still appeared 
in "burgher dress," or unmilitary clothes; "brown 
English coat, yellow waistcoat" and the other indis- 
pensables. But this fashion became rarer with him 
every year; and ceased altogether (say Chronologists) 
about the year 17 19: after which he appeared always 
simply as Colonel of the Potsdam Guards (his own Life- 
guard Regiment) in simple Prussian uniform : close 
military coat ; blue, with red cuffs and collar, buff waist- 
coat and breeches, white linen gaiters to the knee. He 
girt his sword about the loins, well out of the mud ; 
walked always with a thick bamboo in his hand. 
Steady, not slow of step ; with his triangular hat, cream- 



g5 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

white round wig (in his older days), and face tending to 
purple, — the eyes looking-out mere investigation, sharp 
swift authority, and dangerous readiness to rebuke and 
set the cane in motion : — it was so he walked abroad in 
this earth ; and the common run of men rather fled his 
approach than courted it. 

For, in fact, he was dangerous ; and would ask in an 
alarming manner, " Who are you ? " Any fantastic, much 
more any suspicious-looking person, might fare the 
worse. An idle lounger at the street-corner he has 
been known to hit over the crown ; and peremptorily 
despatch: "Home, Sirrah, and take to some work!" 
That the apple-women be encouraged to knit, while 
waiting for custom ; — encouraged and quietly con- 
strained, and at length packed away, and their stalls 
taken from them, if unconstrainable, — there has, as we 
observed, an especial rescript been put forth ; very curi- 
ous to read. 

Dandiacal figures, nay people looking like French- 
man, idle flaunting women even, — better for them to be 
going. "Who are you?" and if you lied or prevari- 
cated [" Er blicke inich gerade an. Look me in the face, 
then !"), or even stumbled, hesitated, and gave suspicion 
of prevaricating, it might be worse for you. A soft 
answer is less effectual than a prompt clear one, to turn 
away wrath. "A Candidatiis TJicologice, your Majes- 
ty," answered a handfast threadbare youth one day, 
when questioned in this manner. — "Where from?" 
"Berlin, your Majesty." — "Hm, na, the Berliners are a 
good-for-nothing set." "Yes, truly, too many of them ; 
but there are exceptions; I know two." — "Two? which 
then?" "Your Majesty and myself!" — Majesty burst 
into a laugh : the Candidatus was got examined by the 
Consistoriums, and Authorities proper in that matter, 
and put into a chaplaincy. —F. IV. 4. 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



87 



FREDERICK THE GREA T. 
About fourscore years ago,* there used to be seen 
sauntering on the terraces of Sans-Souci, for a short 
time in the afternoon, or you might have met him else- 
where at an earher hour, riding or driving in a rapid 
business manner, on the open roads or through the 
scraggy woods and avenues of that intricate amphibious 
Potsdam region, a highly interesting, lean, little old man, 
of alert though slightly stooping figure ; whose name 
among strangers was King Frederick the Second, or 
Frederick the Great of Prussia, and at home among the 
common people, who much loved and esteemed him, 
was Vater Fritz — Father Fred — a name of familiarity 
which had not bred contempt in that instance. He is a 
King every inch of him, though without the trappings 
of a King. Presents himself in a Spartan simplicity of 
vesture : no crown, but an old military cocked-hat — 
generally old, or trampled and kneaded into absolute 
softness, if new ; no sceptre but one like Agamemnon's, 
a walking-stick cut from the woods, which serves also 
as a riding-stick (with which he hits the horse "between 
the ears," say authors) ; — and for royal robes, a mere 
soldier's blue coat with red facings, coat likely to be 
old, and sure to have a good deal of Spanish snuff on 
the breast of it ; rest of the apparel dim, unobtrusive 
in colour or cut, ending in high over-knee mihtary 
boots, which may be brushed (and, I hope, kept soft 
with an underhand suspicion of oil), but are not permit- 
ted to be blackened or varnished ; Day and Martin 
with their soot-pots forbidden to approach. 

The man is not of god-Hke physiognomy, any more 
than of imposing stature or costume ; close-shut mouth 
with thin lips, prominent jaws and nose, receding brow, 
by no means of Olympian height ; head, however, is of 
long form, and has superlative gray eyes in it. Not 
what is called a beautiful man ; nor yet, by all appear- 

* Written in 1856. Frederick was born 24th Jany., 1712; he died 17th August, 1786. 



88 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

ance, what is called a happy. On the contrary, the 
face bears evidence of many sorrows, as they are 
termed, of much hard labour done in this world ; and 
seems to anticipate nothing but more still coming. 
Quiet stoicism, capable enough of what joy there were, 
but not expecting any worth mention ; great uncon- 
scious and some conscious pride, well tempered with 'a 
cheery mockery of humour, are written on that old 
face, which carries its chin well forward, in spite of the 
slight stoop about the neck ; snuffy nose, rather flung 
into the air, under its old cocked-hat, like an old snuffy 
lion on the watch ; and such a pair of eyes as no man, 
or lion, or lynx of that Century bore elsewhere, accord- 
ing to all the testimony we have. 'Those eyes,' says 
Mirabeau, 'which, at the bidding of his great soul, fasci- 
nated 5^ou with seduction or with terror {portaient au gre 
de son dtne heroiqiie, la seduction ou la terreiii'). Most 
excellent, potent, brilliant eyes, swift darting as the 
stars, steadfast as the sun ; gray, we said, of the azure 
gray colour ; large enough, not of glaring size ; the 
habitual expression of them vigilance and penetrating 
sense, rapidity resting on depth. Which is an excellent 
combination ; and gives us the notion of a lambent 
outer radiance springing from some great inner sea of 
light and fire in the man. The voice, if he speak to 
you, is of similar physiognomy : clear, melodious and 
sonorous ; all tones are in it, from that of ingenious 
inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter, (rather 
prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, 
up to desolating word of rebuke and reprobation : a 
voice 'the clearest and most agreeable in conversation I 
ever heard,' says witty Dr. Moore. ' He speaks a great 
deal,' continues the Doctor; 'yet those who hear him, 
regret that he does not speak a good deal more. His 
observations are always lively, very often just ; and few 
men possess the talent for repartee in greater perfec- 
tion.' * * * 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 89 

This was a man of infinite mark to his contempora- 
ries, who had witnessed surprising feats from him in 
the world ; very questionable notions and ways, which 
he had contrived to maintain against the world and its 
criticisms. As an original man has always to do ; 
much more an original ruler of men. The world, in 
fact, had tried hard to put him down, as it does, uncon- 
sciously or consciously, with all such ; and after the 
most conscious exertions, and at one time a dead-lift 
spasm of all its energies for Seven Years, had not been 
able. Principalities and powers, Imperial, Royal, Czar- 
ish. Papal enemies innumerable as the sea-sand, had 
risen against him, only one helper left among the 
world's Potentates (and that one only while there should 
be help rendered in return) ; and he led them all such a 
dance as had astonished mankind and them. —F. /. i. 

FREDERICK AND NAPOLEON: 

The French Revolution may be said to have for about 
half a century quite submerged Frederick, abolished 
him from the memories of men ; and now on coming 
to life again, he is found defaced under strange mud- 
incrustations, and the eyes of mankind look at him from 
a singularly changed, what we must call an oblique and 
perverse point of vision. This is one of the difficulties 
of dealing with his History ; — especially if you happen 
to believe both in the French Revolution and in him ; 
that is to say, both that real Kingship is eternally indis- 
pensable, and also that the Destruction of Sham King- 
ship (a frightful process) is occasionally so. 

On the breaking out of that formidable Explosion 
and Suicide of his Century, Frederick sank into com- 
parative obscurity ; eclipsed amid the ruins of that 
universal Earthquake, the very dust of which darkened 
all the air, and made of day a disastrous midnight. 
Black midnight, broken only by the blaze of conflagra- 
tions ; wherein, to our terrified imaginations, were seen, 



QQ THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

not men, French and other, but ghastly portents, stalk- 
ing wrathful, and shapes of avenging gods. It must be 
owned the figure of Napoleon was titanic — especially 
to the generation that looked on him, and that waited 
shuddering to be devoured by him. In general, in that 
French Revolution, all was on a huge scale ; if not 
greater than anything in human experience, at least 
more grandiose. All was recorded in bulletins, too, 
addressed to the shilling- gallery ; and there were fellows 
on the stage with such a breadth of sabre, extent of 
whiskerage, strength of windpipe, and command of men 
and gunpowder, as had never been seen before. How 
they bellowed, stalked and flourished about ; counter- 
feiting Jove's thunder to an amazing degree ! Terrific 
Drawcansir figures, of enormous whiskerage, unlimited 
command of gunpowder ; not without sufficient ferocity, 
and even a certain heroism, stage-heroism in them; 
compared with whom, to the shilling-gallery, and fright- 
ened excited theatre at large, it seemed as if there had 
been no generals or sovereigns before ; as if Frederick, 
Gustavus, Cromwell, William Conqueror, and Alexander 
the Great were not worth speaking of henceforth. 

All this, however, in half a century is considerably 
altered. The Drawcansir equipments getting gradually 
torn off, the natural size is seen better ; translated from 
the bulletin style into that of fact and history, miracles, 
even to the shilling-gallery, are not so miraculous. It 
begins to be apparent that there lived great men before 
the era of bulletins and Agamemnon. Austerlitz and 
Wagram shot away more gunpowder, — gunpowder 
probabl)^ in the proportion of ten to one, or a hundred 
to one: but neither of them was tenth-part such a beat- 
ing to your enemy as that of Rosbach, brought about by 
strategic art, human ingenuity and intrepidity, and the 
loss of 478 men. Leuthen, too, the Battle of Leuthen 
(though so few English readers ever heard of it) may 
very well hold up its head beside any victory gained by 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



91 



Napoleon or another. For the odds were not far from 
three to one ; the soldiers were of not far from equal 
quality ; and only the General was consummately supe- 
rior, and the defeat a destruction. Napoleon did indeed, 
by immense expenditure of men and gunpowder, over- 
run Europe for a time : but Napoleon never, by 
husbanding and wisely expending his men and gun- 
powder, defended a little Prussia against all Europe, 
year after year for seven years long, till Europe had 
enough, and gave up the enterprise as one it could not 
manage. So soon as the Drawcansir equipments are 
well torn off, and the shilling-gallery got to silence, it 
will be found that there were great Kings before Napo- 
leon, — and likewise an Art of War, grounded on 
veracity and human courage and insight, not upon 
Drawcansir rodomontade, grandiose Dick-Turpinism, 
revolutionary madness, and unlimited expenditure of 
men and gunpowder. "You may paint with a very 
big brush, and yet not be a great painter," says a satir- 
ical friend of mine. This is becoming more and more 
apparent, as the dust- whirlwind, and huge uproar of the 
last generation, gradually dies away again. —F. I. i. 

AUGUST THE STRONG, KING OF POLAND. 

Frederick August, the big King of Poland, called by 
some of his contemporaries August the Great, which ep- 
ithet they had to change iox August der Starke, August 
the Physically Strong : this August of the three-hun- 
dred-and-fifty-four bastards, who was able to break a 
horse-shoe with his hands, and who lived in this world 
regardless of expense, — he is the individual of this jun- 
ior-senior Albertine Line,* whom I wish to pause one 
moment upon: merely with the remark, that if Moritzt 
had any hand in making him the phenomenon he was, 
Moritz may well be ashamed of his work. More trans- 

* Saxony. 

t Elector of Saxony : " the ' Maurice' known in English Protestant books." Fred- 
erick August was his grand-nephew. 



Q2 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

cendent king of gluttonous flunkeys seldom trod this 
lower earth, A miracle to his own century, — to certain 
of the flunkey species a quasi-celestial miracle, bright 
with diamonds, with endless mistresses, regardless of ex- 
pense, — to other men a prodigy, portent and quasi-in- 
fernal miracle, awakening insoluble inquiries : Whence 
this, ye righteous gods, and above all, whither ! Poor 
devil, he was full of good humour too, and had the best 
of stomachs. A man that had his own troubles withal. 
His miscellany of mistresses, very pretty some of them, 
but fools all, would have driven most men mad. You 
may discern dimly in the flunkey histories, in babbling 
PoUnitz and others, what a set they w^ere ; what a time 
he must have had with their jealousies, their sick va- 
pours, megrims, angers and infatuations ; — springing, 
on occasion, out of bed in their shift, like wild-cats, at 
the throat of him, fixing their mad claws in him, when 
he merely enters to ask, "How do you do, mon chow?'' 
Some of them, it is confidently said, were his own chil- 
dren. The unspeakably exemplary mortal ! . 

He got his skin well beaten, — cow-hicled, as we may 
say, — by Charles XH., the rough Swede, clad mostly in 
leather. He was coaxed and driven-about by Peter 
the Great, as Irish post-horses are, — long miles, with a 
bundle of hay, never to be attained, stuck upon the 
pole of the coach. He reduced himself to utter bank- 
ruptcy. He had got the crown of Poland by pretend- 
ing to adopt Papistry, — the apostate, and even pseudo- 
apostate ; and we may say he has made Protestant Sax- 
ony, and his own House first of all, spiritually bankrupt 
ever since. He died at last, at Warsaw (year 1733), of 
an 'old man's foot;' highly composed, eupeptic to the 
last ; busy in scheming out a partition of Poland, — a 
thing more than once in men's heads, but not to be com- 
pleted just yet. Adieu to him forever and a day. 

— AI. The Prinzcnraub. 



portraits and characters. 93 

marAchal de sake. 

On the authority of Baron d'Espagnac, {Vie dii Mare- 
chal de Saxe\ I mention one other thing of this Mau- 
ritius or Moritz, Marechal de Saxe ; who like his father,* 
was an immensely strong man. Walking once in the 
streets of London, he came into a collision with a scav- 
enger, who perhaps had splashed him with his mud- 
shovel, or the like. Scavenger would make no apol- 
ogy ; willing to try a round of boxing instead. Moritz 
grasps him suddenly by the back of the breeches ; 
whirls him aloft in horizontal position ; pitches him in- 
to his own mudcart, and walks on. A man of much 
physical strength till his wild ways wasted it all. 

He was tall of stature, had black circular eyebrows, 
black bright eyes, — brightness partly intellectual, partly 
animal, — oftenest with a smile in them. Undoubtedly 
a man of unbounded dissoluteness ; of much energy, 
loose native ingenuity ; and the worst speller probably 
ever known. Take this one specimen, the shortest I 
have, not otherwise the best ; specimen achieved, when 
there had a proposal arisen in the obsequious Acade- 
mic Franfaise to elect this Marechal a member. The 
Marechal had the sense to decline. lis veule me fere 
de la Cade'inie, writes he ; sela miret com une bage a un 
chas ; meaning probably, Us venlcnt me f aire de V Acad- 
anie ; cela m'iroit comme nne bague a un chat : 'They 
would have me in the Academy ; it would suit me as a 
ring would a cat,' or say, a pair of breeches a cock. 
Probably he had much skill in war ; I cannot judge : 
his victories were very pretty ; but it is to be remem- 
bered, he gained them all over the Duke of Cumber- 
land ; who was beaten by everybody that tried, and 
never beat anything, except once some starved High- 
land peasants at CuUoden. —M. The Prinzenranb. 

* The "big King of Poland." His mother was Aurora von Konigsmark. He was 
born at Goslar, Oct. 28, 1696. 



g4 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

NAPOLEON. 

A GREAT man is ever, as the Transcendentalists speak, 
possessed with an idea. Napoleon himself, not the su- 
perfinest of great men, and ballasted sufficiently with 
prudences and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear 
enough, an idea to start with : the idea that Democracy- 
was the Cause of Man, the right and infinite Cause. 
Accordingly he made himself ' the armed soldier of 
Democracy ; ' and did vindicate it in a rather great 
manner. Nay, to the very last, he had a kind of idea : 
that, namely, of ' La carriere oiiverte aux talens, The 
tools to him that can handle them ; ' really one of the 
best ideas yet promulgated on that matter, or rather, the 
one true central idea, towards which all the others, if 
they tend anywhither, must tend. Unhappily it was 
in the military province only that Napoleon could real- 
ize this idea of his, being forced to fight for himself the 
while: before he got it tried to any extent in the civil 
province of things, his head by much victory grew light 
(no head can stand more than its quantity) ; and he lost 
head, as they say, and became a selfish ambitionist and 
quack, and was hurled out ; leaving his idea to be real-* 
ized, in the civil province of things, by others ! 
—AI. Scott. 

MIR ABE A U. 

Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white 
cravat, that have come up to regenerate France, might 
one guess would become their king? For a king or 
leader they, as all bodies of men, must have : be their 
work what it may, there is one man there who, by char- 
acter, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it ; that man, 
as future not yet elected king, walks there among the 
rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be ? With 
the /mre, as himself calls it, or black boars head, fit to 
be "shaken" as a senatorial portent .f* Through whose 
shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn, seamed, carbun- 
cled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox, incon- 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



95 



tinence, bankruptcy, — and burning fire of genius; like 
comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confu- 
sions ? It is Gabriel Honor'e Riqicetti de Mirabean, 
the world-compeller ; man-ruling Deputy of Aix ! Ac- 
cording to the Baroness de Stael, he steps proudly 
along, though looked at askance here ; and shakes his 
black chevehire, or lion's-mane ; as if prophetic of great 
deeds. 

Yes, Reader, that is the Type- Frenchman of this 
epoch : as Voltaire was of the last. He is French in 
his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; 
perhaps more French than any other man ; — and intrin- 
sically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. 
The National Assembly were all different without that 
one ; nay, he might say with the old Despot : " The 
National Assembly? I am that." 

Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood : for 
the Riquettis, or Arrighettis, had to fly from Florence 
and the Guelfs, long centuries ago, had settled in Pro- 
vence ; where from generation to generation they have 
ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred : irascible, 
indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they 
wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes 
verged towards madness, yet did not reach it. One 
ancient Riquetti, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow, chains 
two Mountains together; and the chain, with its "iron 
star of five rays," is still to be seen. May not a mod- 
ern Riquetti «;/chain so much, and set it drifting, — which 
also shall be seen ? 

Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mira- 
beau ; Destiny has watched over him, prepared him 
from afar. Did not his Grandfather, stout Col-d' Ar- 
ge}it (Silver-stock, so they named him), shattered and 
slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one fell day, 
lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano ; while Prince 
Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him, — ■ 
only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle ovei 



96 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



that loved head ; and Vendome, dropping his spyglass, 
moaned out, " Mirabeau is dead, thenl" Nevertheless 
he was not dead : he awoke to breath, and miraculous 
surgery ; — for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver 
stock he kept his scarred head erect, through long years; 
and wedded; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the 
Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year 
1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honore 
did likewise see the light: roughest lion's whelp ever 
littered of that rough breed. How the old lion (for our 
old Marquis too was lionlike, most unconquerable, 
kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wondering on his 
offspring ; and determined to train him as no lion had 
yet been ! It is in vain, O Marquis ! This cub, though 
thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in 
dogcart of Political Economy, and be a Friend of Men; 
he will not be Thou, but must and will be Himself, an- 
other than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, " whole family 
save one in prison, and three-score Lcttrcs-dc- Cachet" 
for thy own sole use, do but astonish the world. 

Our luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has 
been in the Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from 
his tower ; in the Castle of If, and heard the Mediter- 
ranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of 
Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing to 
his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes ; — all by Lettre- 
de- Cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pon- 
tarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner) ; was noticed 
fording estuaries of the sea (at low water), in flight from 
the face of men. He has pleaded before Aix Parle- 
ments (to get back his wife) ; the public gathering on 
roofs, to see since they could not hear: "the clatter- 
teeth (claquedent) ! " snarls singular old Mirabeau ; dis- 
cerning in such admired forensic eloquence nothing but 
two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant, sonorous, 
of the drum species. 

But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfar- 
ings, what has he not seen and tried! From drill-ser- 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 07 

geants, to prime ministers, to foreign and domestic book- 
sellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of 
men he has gained ; for at bottom it is a social, loving 
heart, that wild unconquerable one ; — more especially 
all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter at 
Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, 
whom he could not but " steal," and be beheaded for — 
in effigy ! For indeed hardly since the Arabian Prophet 
lay dead on the battle-field to All's admiration, was 
there seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty 
men. In War, again, he has helped to conquer Cor- 
sica ; fought duels, irregular brawls ; horsewhipped cal- 
umnious barons. In Literature, he has written on Des- 
potism, on Lettres-de- Cachet ; Erotics Sapphic- Werte- 
rean. Obscenities, Profanities ; Books on the Prussian 
Monarchy, on Cagliostro, on Calonne, on the Water 
Companies of Paris : — each book comparable, we will 
say, to a bituminous alarum-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! 
The firepan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own ; 
but the lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless com- 
bustible rubbish (for all is fuel to him), was gathered 
from hucksters, and ass-paniers, of every description 
under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough 
have been heard to exclaim : Out upon it, the fire is 
mine f 

Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man 
such a talent for borrowing. The idea, the faculty of 
another man he can make his ; the man himself he can 
make his. " All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de 
rcverbcre) ! " snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will 
not. Crabbed old Friend of Men ! it is his sociality, 
his aggregative nature ; and will now be the quality of 
qualities for him. In that forty years' " struggle against 
despotism," he has gained the glorious faculty of se/f- 
help, and yet not lost the glorious natural gift of fellow- 
ship, of being helped. Rare union : this man can live 
self-sufficing — yet lives also in the life of other men : 

7 



98 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY, 



can make men love him, work with him ; a born king 
of men ! 

But consider further how, as the old Marquis still 
snarls, he has " made away with {huine, swallowed) all 
Formulas y — a fact which, if we meditate it, will in 
these days mean much. This is no man of system, 
then ; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A 
man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; 
and see through it, and conquer it : for he has intellect, 
he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with 
logic-spectacles ; but with an eye ! Unhappily without 
Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any fixed sort ; 
yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and sincer- 
ity there : a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham ! 
And so he, having struggled " forty years against des- 
potism," and " made away with all formulas," shall now 
become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same. 
For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to 
cast off despotism ; to make away with Jier old formulas, 
— having found them naught, worn out, far from the 
reality ? She will make away with such formulas ; — 
and even go bare, if need be, till she have found new 
ones. 

Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, 
this singular Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, 
with black Samson-locks under the slouch-hat, he steps 
along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not 
be choked and smothered, but would fill all France with 
smoke. And now it has gotrtz'r/ it will burn its whole 
substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all 
France with flame. Strange lot ! Forty years of that 
smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough ; 
then victory over that ; — and like a burning mountain 
he blazes heaven-high ; and for twenty-three resplen- 
dent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-tor- 
rents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of 
an amazed Europe ; — and then lies hollow, cold forever ! 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS 



99 



Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest 
of them all : in the whole National Deputies, in the 
whole Nation, there is none like and none second to 
thee. —F. Ji., P. I., B. IV. 4 

But whoever Avill, with sympathy, which is the first 
essential towards insight, look at this questionable Mira- 
beau, may find that there lay verily in him, as the 
basis of all, a Sincerity, a great fore Earnestness ; nay 
call it Honesty, for the man did before all things see, 
with that clear flashing vision, into what was, into what 
existed as fact ; and did, with his wild heart, follow that 
and no other. Whereby or what ways soever he travels 
and struggles, often enough falling, he is still a brother 
man. Hate him not ; thou canst not hate him ! Shin- 
ing through such soil and tarnish, and now victorious 
effulgent, and oftenest struggling eclipsed, the light of 
genius itself is in this man ; which was never yet base 
and hateful ; but at worst was lamentable, lovable with 
pity. They say that he was ambitious, that he wanted 
to be Minister? It is most true. And was he not 
simply the one man in France who could have done 
any good as Minister ? Not vanity alone, not pride 
alone ; far from that ! Wild burstings of affection were 
in this great heart ; of fierce lightning, and soft dew of 
pity. So sunk bemired in wretchedest defacements, it 
may be said of him, like the Magdalen of old, that he 
loved much : his Father, the harshest of old crabbed 
men, he loved with warmth, with veneration. 

Be it that his falls and follies are manifold, — as him- 
self often lamented even with tears. Alas, is not the 
Life of every such man already a poetic Tragedy ; 
made up ' of Fate and of one's own Deservings,' of 
Schicksal und cigene ScJuild ; full of the elements of 
Pity and Fear ? This brother man, if not Epic for us, 
is Tragic ; if not great, is large ; large in his qualities, 
world-large in his destinies. —M. Mlrabeau. 



100 . THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

MiRABEAU'S spiritual gift will be found on examination, 
to be verily an honest and a great one ; far the strong- 
est, best practical intellect of that time ; entitled to rank 
among the strong of all times. * * * Hear this 
man on any subject, you will find him worth consider- 
ing. He has words in him, rough deliverances ; such 
as m;n do not forget. As thus: 'I know but three 
ways of living in this world : by wages for work ; by 
begging; thirdly, by stealing (so named or not so 
named).' Again : 'Malebranche saw all things in God; 
and M. Necker sees all things in Necker !' There are 
nicknames of Mirabeau's worth whole treatises, 
'Grandison-Cromwell-Lafayette :' write a volume on 
the man, as many volumes have been written, and try 
to say more ! It is the best likeness yet drawn of him, 
— by a flourish and two dots. Of such inexpressible 
advantage is it that a man have 'an eye, instead of a 
pair of spectacles merely ;' that, seeing through the 
formulas of things, and even 'making-away' with 
many a formula, he see into the thing itself, and so 
know it and be master of it ! —M. Mimbeau. 

D ANTON. 

If Bonaparte were the 'armed Soldier of Democracy,' 
invincible while he continued true to that, then let us 
call this Danton the Ejifajit Perdu, and z/«enlisted 
Revolter and Titan of Democracy, which could not yet 
have soldiers or discipline, but was by the nature of it 
lawless. An Earth-born, we say, yet honestly born of 
Earth ! In the Memou'S of Garat, and elsewhere, one 
sees these fire-eyes beam with earnest insight, fill with the 
water of tears ; the broad rude features speak withal of 
wild human sympathies; that Antalus' bosom also held a 
heart. "It is not the alarm-cannon that you hear," 
cries he to the terror-struck, when the Prussians were 
already at Verdun : "it is the/«5 de charge against our 
enemies." ^^ De Vmidace, et e^tcore de Vaudace, et 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. iqj 

toiijoiirs de Vatidace, To dare, and again to dare, and 
without limit to dare !" — there is nothing left but that. 
Poor 'Mirabcau of the Sansculottes,' what a mission! 
And it could not be but done, — and it was done. But 
indeed, may there not be, if well considered, more virtue 
in this feeling itself, once bursting earnest from the 
wild heart, than in whole lives of immaculate Pharisees 
and Respectabilities, with their eye ever set on 'char- 
acter' and the letter of the law: ''Que moii noin soil 
Jietri, Let my name be blighted, then ; let the cause be 
glorious, and have victory " ! By-and-by, as we pre- 
dict, the Friend of Humanity, since so many Knife- 
grinders have no story to tell him, will find some sort 
of story in this Danton. A rough-hewn giant of a 
man, not anthropophagous entirely ; whose 'figures of 
speech,' and also of action, 'are all gigantic;' whose 
'voice reverberates from the domes,' and dashes Bruns- 
wick across the marches in a very wrecked condition. 
Always his total freedom from cant is one thing ; even in 
his briberies, and sins as to money, there is a frankness, 
a kind of broad greatness. Sincerity, a great rude sin- 
cerity of insight and of purpose, dwelt in the man, 
which quality is the root of all : a man who could see 
through many things, and would stop at very few 
things ; who marched and fought impetuously forward, 
in the questionablest element ; and now bears the pen- 
alty in a name 'blighted,' yet, as we say, visibly clearing 
itself Once cleared, why should not this name too 
have significance for men ? The wild history is a 
tragedy, as all human histories are. Brawny Dantons, 
still to the present hour, rend the globe, as simple 
brawny Farmers, and reap peaceable harvests, at Arcis- 
sur-Aube ; and this Danton — ! It is an ?/«rhymed 
tragedy; very bloody, fuliginous (after the manner of 
the elder dramatists) ; yet full of tragic elements ; not 
undeserving natural pity and fear. In quiet times, per- 
haps still at a great distance, the happier on-looker may 



JQ2 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Stretch out the hand, across dim centuries, to him, and 
say : " Ill-starred brother, how thou foughtest with wild 
lion-strength, and yet not with strength enough, and 
flamedst aloft, and wert trodden down of sin and mis- 
ery ; — behold thou also wert a man 1" —M. Mirabeau. 

CAMILLE DESMOULINS. 
This Procureur General de la Lanterne has a place of 
his own in the history of the Revolution ; there are not 
many notabler persons in it than he. A light harmless 
creature; as he says of himself, 'a man born to write 
verses;' but whom Destiny directed to overthrow Bas- 
tilles, and go to the guillotine for doing that. How 
such a man will comport himself in a French Revolu- 
tion, as he from time to time turns up there, is worth 
seeing. Of loose headlong character ; a man stuttering 
in speech ; stuttering, infirm in conduct too, till one 
huge idea laid hold of him : a man for whom Art, 
Fortune or himself would never do much, but to whom 
Nature had been very kind ! One meets him always 
with a sort of forgiveness, almost of underhand love, as 
for a prodigal son. He has good gifts and even aquire- 
ments ; elegant law-scholarship, quick sense, the freest 
joyful heart: a fellow of endless wit, clearness, soft 
lambent brilliancy ; on any subject you can listen to 
him, if without approving, yet without yawning. As a 
writer, in fact, there is nothing French, that we have 
heard of, superior or equal to him for these fifty years. 

— M, Hist, of French Revohition. 

— Slight-built — ; he with the long curling locks; 
with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradi- 
ated with genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt v/ithin it : 
that figure is Camilje Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite 
shrewdness, wit, nay humour ; one of the sprightliest 
clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor Camille, 
say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to 
pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong 
lightly sparkling man ! —F. A\, Part I., B. iv. 4. 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS, 



103 



ROBESPIERRE. 
Consider Maximilien Robespierre ; for the greater 
part of two years, what one may call Autocrat of 
France. A poor sea-green (verddtrc), atrabiliar Form- 
ula of a man ; without head, without heart, or any 
grace, gift or even vice beyond common, if it were not 
vanity, astucity, diseased rigour (which some count 
strength) as of a cramp : really a most poor sea-green 
individual in spectacles ; meant by Nature for a Meth- 
odist parson of the stricter sort, to doom men who de- 
parted from the written confession ; to chop fruitless 
shrill logic ; to contend, and suspect, and ineffectually 
wrestle and wriggle ; and, on the whole, to love, or to 
know, or to be (properly speaking) Nothing : — this was 
he who, the sport of the wracking winds, saw himself 
whirled aloft to command la premiere nation de runi- 
vers, and all men shouting long life to him : one of the 
most lamentable, tragic, sea-green objects, ever whirled 
aloft in that manner, in any country, to his own swift 
destruction and the world's long wonder ! —M. Mirabcau. 

CAGLIOSTRO. 
One of the most authentic documents preserved of him 
is the Picture of his Visage. An Effigies once univer- 
sally diffused ; in oil-paint, aquatint, marble, stucco, and 
perhaps gingerbread, decorating millions of apartments: 
of which remarkable Effigies one copy, engraved in the 
line-manner, happily still lies here. Fittest of visages ; 
worthy to be worn by the Quack of Quacks. A most 
portentous face of scoundrelism : a fat, snub, abomina- 
ble face ; dew-lapped, flat-nosed, greasy, full of greedi- 
ness, sensuality, oxlike obstinacy ; a forehead impudent, 
refusing to be ashamed ; and then two eyes turned up 
seraphically languishing, as in divine contemplation and 
adoration ; a touch of quiz too : on the whole perhaps 
the most perfect quack-face produced by the eighteenth 
century. There he sits, and seraphically languishes, 
with this epigraph : 



104 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

De I'Ami des Humains reconnaissez les traits : 

Tous ses jours sont naarques par de nouveaux bienfaits, 

II prolonge la vie, il secourt I'indigence ; 

Le plaisir d'etre utile est seul sa recompense. 

— M. Cagliostro. 
VOLTAIRE. 

Voltaire's worst enemies, it seems to us, will not 
deny that he had naturally a keen sense for rectitude, 
indeed for all virtue : the utmost vivacity of tempera- 
ment characterises him ; his quick susceptibility for 
every form of beauty is moral as well as intellectual. 
Nor was his practice without indubitable and highly 
creditable proofs of this. To the help-needing he was 
at all times a ready benefactor:, many were the hungry 
adventurers who profited by his bounty, and then bit 
the hand that had fed them. If we enumerate his gen- 
erous acts, from the case of the Abbe Desfontaines 
down to that of the Widow Calas, and the Serfs of 
Saint Claude, we shall find that few private men have 
had so wide a circle of charity, and have watched over 
it so well. Should it be objected that love of reputa- 
tion entered largely into these proceedings, Voltaire 
can afford a handsome deduction on that head : should 
the uncharitable even calculate that love of reputation 
was the sole motive, we can only remind them that love 
oi such reputation is itself the effect of a social humane 
disposition ; and wish, as an immense improvement, that 
all men were animated with it. —M. Voltaire. 

The truth is we are trying Voltaire by too high a stand- 
ard ; comparing him with an ideal which he himself 
never strove after, perhaps never seriously aimed at. 
He is no great Man, but only a great Persifletir ; a 
man for whom life and all that pertains to it, has, at 
best, but a despicable meaning ; who meets its difficul- 
ties not with earnest force, but with gay agility ; and is 
found always at the top, less by power in swimming, than 
by lightness in floating. Take him in this character, 
forgetting that any other was ever ascribed to him, and 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



105 



we find that he enacted it almost to perfection. Never 
man better understood the whole secret of Persiflage ; 
meaning thereby not only the external faculty of polite 
contempt, but that art of general inward contempt, by 
which a man of this sort endeavors to subject the cir- 
cumstances of his Destiny to his Volition, and be, what 
is the instinctive effort of all men, though in the midst 
of material Necessity, morally Free. Voltaire's latent 
derision is as light, copious and all-prevading as the de- 
rision that he utters. Nor is this so simple an attain- 
ment as we might fancy ; a certain kind and degree of 
Stoicism, or approach to Stoicism, is necessary for the 
completed Persifleur ; as for moral, or even practical 
completion, in any other way. The most indifferent- 
minded man is not by nature indifferent to his own pain 
and pleasure : this is an indifference which he must by 
some method study to acquire, or acquire the show of; 
and which, it is fair to say, Voltaire manifests in rather 
a respectable degree. Without murmuring, he has rec- 
onciled himself to most things : the human lot, in this 
lower world, seems a strange business, yet, on the whole, 
with more of the farce in it than of the tragedy ; to 
him it is nowise heartrending, that this Planet of ours 
should be sent sailing through Space, like a miser- 
able aimless Ship-of-Fools, and he himself be a fool 
among the rest, and only a very little wiser than they. 
He does not, like Bolingbroke, 'patronise Providence,' 
though such sayings as Si Dieu nexistait pas, il faii- 
drait Vinventer, seem now and then to indicate a tend- 
ency of that sort: but at all events, he never openly 
levies war against Heaven ; well knowing that the time 
spent in frantic malediction, directed thither, might be 
spent otherwise with more profit. There is, truly, no 
Werterisin in him, either in its bad or its good sense. 
If he sees no unspeakable majesty in heaven and earth, 
neither does he see any unsufferable horror there. His 
view of the world is a cool, gently scornful, altogether 



105 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

prosaic one ; his sublimest Apocalypse of Nature lies in 
the microscope and telescope ; the Earth is a place for 
producing corn ; the Starry Heavens are admirable as 
a nautical time-keeper. Yet, like a prudent man, he 
has adjusted himself to his condition, such as it is : he 
does not chaunt any Miserere over human life, calculat- 
ing that no charitable dole, but only laughter, would 
be the reward of such an enterprise ; does not hang or 
drown himself, clearly understanding that death itself 
will soon save him that trouble. Affliction, it is true, 
has not for him any precious jewel in its head ; on the 
contrary, it is an unmixed nuisance; yet, happily, not 
one to be howled over, so much as one to be speedily 
removed out of sight : if he does not learn from it Hu- 
mility, and the sublime lesson of Resignation, neither 
does it teach him hard-heartedness and sickly discon- 
tent; but he bounds lightly over it, leaving both the 
jewel and the toad at a safe distance behind him. 
— M. Voltaire. 

ROUSSEAU. 
Hovering in the distance, with woestruck, minatory 
air, stern-beckoning, comes Rousseau. Poor Jean 
Jacques ! Alternately deified, and cast to the dogs; a 
deep-minded, high-minded, even noble, yet wofully mis- 
arranged mortal, with all misformations of Nature in- 
tensated to the verge of madness by unfavourable Fort- 
une. A lonely man; his life a long soliloquy ! The 
wandering Tiresias of the time; — in whom, however, 
did lie prophetic meaning, such as none of the others 
offer. Whereby indeed it might partly be that the 
world went to such extremes about him; that, long 
after his departure, we have seen one whole nation wor- 
ship him, and a Burke, in the name of another, class 
him with the offscourings of the earth. His true char- 
acter, with its lofty aspirings and poor performings; and 
how the spirit of the man worked so wildly, like celes- 
tial fire in a thick dark element of chaos, and shot forth 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 107 

ethereal radiance, all-piercing lightning, yet could not 
illuminate, was quenched and did not conquer : this, 
with what lies in it, may now be pretty accurately ap- 
preciated. Let his history teach all whom it concerns, 
to ' harden themselves against the ills which Mother 
Nature will try them with ; ' to seek within their own 
soul what the world must forever deny them ; and say 
composedly to the Prince of the Power of this lower 
Earth and Air : Go thou thy way ; I go mine ! 
— M. Diderot. 

He is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excit- 
able, spasmodic man ; at best intense rather than strong. 
He had not the 'talent of Silence,' an invaluable talent; 
which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in 
these times, excel in ! The suffering man ought really 
' to consume his own smoke ; ' there is no good in 
emitting smoke till you have made it into fire, — which, 
in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of be- 
coming ! Rousseau has not depth or width, not calm 
force for diifhculty ; the first characteristic of true great- 
ness. A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and 
rigidity strength ! A man is not strong who takes con- 
vulsion-fits ; though six men cannot hold him then. 
He that can walk under the heaviest weight without 
staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, 
especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind our- 
selves of that. A man who cannot hold his peace, till 
the time come for speaking and acting, is no right man. 
Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A 
high, but narrow contracted intensity in it: bony brows; 
deep, strait-set eyes, in which there is something be- 
wildered-looking, — bewildered, peering with lynx-ea- 
gerness. A face full of misery, even ignoble misery, 
and also of the antagonism against that; something 
mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by intensity : the 
face of what is called a P'anatic, — a sadly contracted 
Hero! —H. V. 



I08 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

GOETHE. 
We find, then, in Goethe, an Artist, in the high and an- 
cient meaning of that term; in the meaning which it may 
have borne long ago among the masters of ItaHan paint- 
ing, and the fathers of Poetry in England ; we say that 
we trace in the creations of this man, belonging in every 
sense to our own time, some touches of that old, divine 
spirit, which had long passed away from among us, nay 
which, as has often been laboriously demonstrated, was 
not to return to this world any more. 

Or perhaps we come nearer our meaning if w'e say 
that in Goethe we discover by far the most striking in- 
stance, in our time, of a writer who is, in strict speech, 
what Philosophy can call a Man. He is neither noble nor 
plebeian, neither liberal or servile, nor infidel nor devo- 
tee ; but the best excellence oi all these, joined in pure 
union ; ' a clear and universal Man.' Goethe's poetry 
is no separate faculty, no mental handicraft ; but the 
voice of the whole harmonious manhood : nay it is the 
very harmony, the living and life-giving harmony of 
that rich manhood which forms his poetry . All good 
men may be called poets in act, or in word ; all good 
poets are so in both. But Goethe besides appears to 
us as a person of that deep endowment, and gifted vis- 
ion, of that experience also and sympathy in the ways 
of all men, which qualify him to stand forth, not only 
as the literary ornament, but in many respects too as 
the Teacher and exemplar of his age. For, to say 
nothing of his natural gifts, he has cultivated himself 
and his art, he has studied how to live and to write, 
with a fidelity, an unwearied earnestness, of which there 
is no other living instance ; of which, among British 
poets especially, Wordsworth alone offers any resem- 
blance. — M. Goethe. 

GOETHE: EQUANIMITY. 
In Goethe's mind the first object that strikes us is its 
calmness, then its beauty; a deeper inspection reveals tc 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



109 



US its vastness and unmeasured strength. This man 
rules, and is not ruled. The stern and fiery energies of 
a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of his be- 
ing; a trembling sensibility has been inured to stand, 
without flinching or murmur, the sharpest trials. Noth- 
ing outward, nothing inward, shall agitate or control him. 
The brightest and most capricious fancy, the most 
piercing and inquisitive intellect, the wildest and deep- 
est imagination ; the highest thrills of joy, the bitterest 
pangs of sorrow : all these are his, he is not theirs. 
While he moves every heart from its steadfastness, his 
own is firm and still : the words that search into the 
utmost recesses of our nature, he pronounces with a 
tone of coldness and equanimity ; in the deepest pathos 
he weeps not, or his tears are like water trickling from 
a rock of adamant. He is king of himself and of his 
world ; nor does he rule it like a vulgar great man, like 
a Napoleon or Charles the Twelfth, by the mere brute 
exertion of his will, grounded on no principle, or on a 
false one : his faculties and feelings are not fettered or 
prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and 
giiided in kindly union under the mild sway of Reason: 
as the fierce primeval elements of chaos were stilled at 
the coming of Light, and bound together, under its soft 
vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation. 

This is the true Rest of man ; the dim aim of every 
human soul, the full attainment of only a chosen few. 
It comes not unsought to any ; but the wise are wise 
because they think no price too high for it. Goethe's 
inward home has been reared by slow and laborious 
efforts ; but it stands on no hollow or deceitful basis : 
for his peace is not from blindness, but from clear vis- 
ion ; not from uncertain hope of alteration, but from 
sure insight into what cannot alter. His world seems 
once to have been desolate and baleful as that of the 
darkest sceptic : but he has covered it anew v/ith beauty 
and solemnity, derived from deeper sources, over which 



no 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Doubt can have no sway. He has inquired fearlessly, 
and fearlessly searched out and denied the False ; but 
he has not forgotten, what is equally essential and infi- 
nitely harder, to search out and admit the True. His 
heart is still full of warmth, though his head is clear and 
cold ; the world for him is still full of grandeur, though 
he clothes it with no false colours ; his fellow creatures 
are still objects of reverence and love, though their 
basenesses are plainer to no eye than to his. To recon- 
cile these contradictions is tlie task of all good men, 
each for himself, in his own way and manner ; a task 
which, in our age, is encompassed with difficulties pecu- 
liar to the time ; and which Goethe seems to have ac- 
complished with a success that few can rival. A mind 
so in unity with itself, even though it were a poor and 
small one, would arrest our attention, and win some 
kind regard from us ; but when this mind ranks among 
the strongest and most complicated of the species, it be- 
comes a sight full of interest, a study full of deep instruc- 
tion. —M. Goethe. 

GOETHE: HIS CHARACTER. 

Precious is the new light of Knowledge which our 
Teacher conquers for us ; yet small to the new light of 
Love which also we derive from him : the most im- 
portant element of any man's performance is the Life 
he has accomplished. Under the intellectual union of 
man and man, which works by precept, lies a holier 
union of affection, working by example ; the influences 
of which latter, mystic, deep-reaching, all-embracing, 
can still less be computed. For Love is ever the begin- 
ning of Knowledge, as fire is of light ; and works also 
more in the manner of fire. That Goethe was a great 
Teacher of men means already that he was a good 
man ; that he had himself learned ; in the school of ex- 
perience had striven and proved victorious. To how 
many hearers, languishing, nigh dead, in the airless 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. i j i 

dungeon of Unbelief (a true vacuum and nonentity)j 
has the assurance that there was such a man, that such 
a man was still possible, come like tidings of great joy ! 
He who would learn to reconcile reverence with clear- 
ness ; to deny and defy what is False, yet believe and 
worship what is True ; amid raging factions, bent on what 
is either altogether empty or has substance in it only for 
a day, which stormfully convulse and tear hither and 
thither a distracted expiring system of society, to adjust 
himself aright ; and, working for the world and in the 
world, keep himself unspotted from the world, — let him 
look here. This man, we may say, became morally 
great, by being in his own age, what in some other ages 
many might have been, a genuine man. His grand ex- 
cellency was this, that he was genuine. As his primary 
faculty, the foundation of all others, was Intellect, depth 
and force of Vision ; so his primary virtue was Justice, 
was the courage to be just. A giant's strength we ad- 
mired in him ; yet, strength ennobled into softest mild- 
ness ; even like that ' silent rock-bound strength of a 
world,' on whose bosom, which rests on the adamant, 
grow flowers. The greatest of hearts was also the 
bravest ; fearless, unwearied, peacefully invincible. A 
completed man : the trembling sensibility, the wild 
enthusiasm of a Mignon can assort with the scornful 
world-mockery of a Mephistopheles ; and each side of 
many sided life receives its due from him. —M. Death 

of Goethe. 

SGHILLER. 
In forming for ourselves some picture of Schiller as a 
man, of what may be called his moral character, per- 
haps the very perfection of his manner of existence 
tends to diminish our estimate of its merits. What he 
aimed at he has attained in a singular degree. His life, 
at least from the period of manhood, is still, unruffled ; 
of clear, even course. The completeness of the victory 
hides from us the magnitude of the struggle. On the 



112 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

whole, however, we may admit, that his character was 
not so much a great character as a holy one. We have 
often named him a Priest; and this title, with the quiet 
loftiness, the pure, secluded, only internal, yet still 
heavenly worth that should belong to it, perhaps best 
describes him. One high enthusiasm takes possession 
of his whole nature. Herein lies his strength, as well 
as the task he has to do ; for this he lived, and we may 
say also he died for it. In his life we see not that the 
social affections played any deep part. As a son, hus- 
band, father, friend, he is ever kindly, honest, amiable ; 
but rarely, if at all, do outward things stimulate him 
into what can be called passion. Of the wild loves and 
lamentations, and all the fierce ardour that distinguish, 
for instance, his Scottish contemporary Burns, there is 
scarcely any trace here. In fact, it was towards the 
Ideal, not towards the Actual, that Schiller's faith and 
hope were directed. His highest happiness lay not in 
outward honour, pleasure, social recreation, perhaps not 
even in friendly affection, such as the world could show 
it ; but in the realm of Poetry, a city of the mind, 
where, for him, all that was true and noble had founda- 
tion. His habits, accordingly, though far from dis- 
social, were solitary ; his chief business and chief pleas- 
ure lay in silent meditation. —M. Schiller. 

RICHTER. 

Viewed under any aspect, whether as Thinker, Moral- 
ist, Satirist, Poet, he is a phenomenon ; a vast, many- 
sided, tumultuous, yet noble nature ; for faults as for 
merits, 'Jean Paul the Unique.' In all departments, 
we find in him a subduing force. Thus, for example, 
few understandings known to us are of a more irresisti- 
ble character than Richter's ; he does not cunningly 
undermine his subject, and lay it open, by syllogistic 
implements or any rule of art; but he crushes it to 
pieces in his arms, he treads it asunder, not without gay 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



113 



triumph, under his feet; and so in almost monstrous 
fashion, yet with piercing clearness, lays bare the in- 
most heart and core of it to all eyes. In passion again, 
there is the same wild vehemence : it is a voice of soft- 
est pity, of endless boundless wailing, a voice as of 
Rachel weeping for her children ; — or the fierce bellow- 
ing of lions amid savage forests. Thus too, he not only 
loves Nature, but he revels in her; plunges into her 
infinite bosom, and fills his whole heart to intoxication 
with her charms. He tells us that he was wont to " 
study, to write, almost to live, in the open air ; and no 
skyey aspect was so dismal that it altogether wanted 
beauty for him. We know of no Poet with so deep and 
passionate and universal a feeling toward Nature : 'from 
the solemn phases of the starry heaven to the simple 
floweret of the meadow, his eye and his heart are open 
for her charms and her mystic meanings.' But what 
most of all shadows forth the inborn, essential temper 
of Paul's mind, is the sportfulness, the wild heartfelt 
Humour, which, in his highest as in his lowest moods, 
ever exhibits itself as a quite inseparable ingredient. 
His Humour, with all its wildness, is of the gravest and 
kindliest, a genuine Humour ; ' consistent with utmost 
earnestness, or rather, inconsistent with the want of it.' 
But on the whole, it is impossible for him to write in 
other than a humorous manner, be his subject what it 
may. His Philosophical Treatises, nay, as we have 
seen, his Autobiography itself, everything that comes 
from him, is encased in some quaint fantastic framing; 
and roguish eyes (yet with a strange sympathy in the 
matter, for his Humour, as we said, is heartfelt and true) 
look out on us through many a grave delineation. 

~-M. Richter. 

LESSING. 
Among all the writers of the eighteenth century, we 
will not except even Diderot and David Hume, there is 
not one of a more compact and rigid intellectual struct- 



114 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



ure ; who more distinctly knows what he is aiming at, 
or with more gracefulness, vigour and precision sets it 
forth to his readers. He thinks with the clearness and 
piercing sharpness of the most expert logician ; but a 
genial fire pervades him, a wit, a heartiness, a general 
richness and fineness of nature, to which most logicians 
are strangers. He is a sceptic in many things, but the 
noblest of sceptics ; a mild, manly, half-careless enthu- 
siasm struggles through his indignant unbelief: he 
stands before us like a toil-worn but unwearied and 
heroic champion, earning not the conquest but the 
battle; as indeed himself admits to us, that 'it is not 
the finding of truth, but the honest search for it, that 

profits.' — -/'/. State of German Literature. 
DR. JOHNSON. 

Nature had given him a high, keen-visioned, almost 
poetic soul ; yet withal imprisoned it in an inert, un- 
sightly body : he that could never rest had not limbs 
that would move with him, but only roll and waddle : 
the inward eye, all-penetrating, all-embracing, must 
look through bodily windows that were dim, half- 
blinded ; he so loved men, and ' never once sazv the 
human face divine ' ! Not less did he prize the love of 
men ; he was eminently social ; the approbation of his 
fellows was dear to him, 'valuable,' as he owned, 'if 
from the meanest of human beings : ' yet the first im- 
pression he produced on every man was to be one of 
aversion, almost of disgust. By Nature it was further 
ordered that the imperious Johnson should be born 
poor : the ruler-soul, strong in its native royalty, gen- 
erjous, uncontrollable, like the lion of the woods, was to 
be housed, then, in such a dwelling-place : of Disfigure- 
ment, l^isease, and lastly of a Poverty which itself 
made him the servant of servants. Thus was the born 
king likewise a born slave : the divine spirit of Music 
must awake imprisoned amid dull-croaking universal 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



lis 



Discords ; the Ariel finds himself encased in the coarse 
hulls of a Caliban. So is it more or less, we know (and 
thou, O Reader, knowest and feelest even now), with 
all men : yet with the fewest men in any such degree 
as with Johnson. —M. Boswell. 

HIS AFFECTIONA TE NA TURK. 

That Mercy can dwell only with Valour, is an old sen^ 
timent or proposition ; which, in Johnson, again receives 
confirmation. Few men on record have had a more 
merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel. 
He was called the Bear ; and did indeed too often look, 
and roar like one ; being forced to it in his own de- 
fence : yet within that shaggy exterior of his there beat 
a heart warm as a mother's, soft as a little child's. Nay 
generally, his very roaring was but the anger of affec- 
tion : the rage of a Bear, if you will ; but of a Bear be- 
reaved of her whelps. Touch his Religion, glance at the 
Church of England, or the Divine Right ; and he was 
upon you ! These things were his Symbols of all that 
was good and precious for men ; his very Ark of the 
Covenant : whoso laid hand on them tore asunder his 
heart of hearts. Not out of hatred to the opponent, 
but of love to the thing opposed, did Johnson grow 
cruel, fiercely contradictory : this is an important dis- 
tinction ; never to be forgotten in our censure of his 
conversational outrages. But observe also with what 
humanity, what openness of love, he can attach himself 
to all things : to a blind old woman, to a Doctor Levett, 
to a Cat 'Hodge.' 'His thoughts in the latter part of 
his life were frequently employed on his deceased 
friends ; he often muttered these or such like sentences : 
"Poor man! and then he died."' How he patiently 
converts his poor home into a Lazaretto ; endures, for 
long years, the contradiction of the miserable and un- 
reasonable ; with him unconnected save that they had 
no other to yield them refuge ! Generous old man ! 



jl5 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Worldly possession he has little ; yet of this he gives 
freely ; from his own hard-earned shilling, the half-pence 
for the poor, that 'waited his coming out,' are not with- 
held : the poor 'waited the coming out' of one not 
quite so poor ! A Sterne can write sentimentalities on 
Dead Asses : Johnson has a rough voice ; but he finds 
the wretched Daughter of Vice fallen down in the 
streets ; carries her home on his own shoulders, and 
like a good Samaritan gives help to the help-needing, 
worthy or unworthy. Ought not Charity, even in that 
sense, to cover a multitude of sins ? No Penny-a-week 
Committee- Lady, no Manager of Soup- Kitchens, dancer 
at Charity- Balls, was this rugged, stern-visaged man : 
but where, in all England, could there have been found 
another soul so full of Pity, a hand so heavenlike 
bounteous as his ? The widow's mite, we know, was 
greater than all the other gifts. 

Perhaps it is this divine feeling of Affection, through- 
out manifested, that principally attracts us toward 
Johnson. A true brother of men is he ; and filial lover 
of the Earth ; who, with little bright spots of Attach- 
ment, 'where lives and works some loved one,' has 
beautified 'this rough solitary Earth into a peopled 
garden.' Lichfield, with its mostly dull and limited 
inhabitants, is to the last one of the sunny islets for 
him: Salve magna parens! Or read those letters on 
his Mother's death : what a genuine solemn grief and 
pity lies recorded there-; a looking back into the Past, 
unspeakably mournful, unspeakably tender. And yet 
calm, sublime ; for he must now act, not look : his ven- 
erated Mother has been taken from him ; but he must 
now write a Rasselas to defray her funeral ! Again in 
this little incident, recorded in his Book of Devotion, 
are not, the tones of sacred Sorrow and Greatness deeper 
than in many a blank verse Tragedy; — as, indeed, 'the 
fifth act of a Tragedy,' though unrhymed, does 'lie in 
every death-bed, were it a peasant's and of straw:' 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



117 



'Sunday, October 18, 1767. Yesterday at about ten 
in the morning, I took my leave forever of my dear old 
friend, Catherine Chambers, who came to hve with my 
mother about 1724, and has been but httle parted from 
us since. She buried my father, my brother and my 
mother. She is now fifty-eight years old. 

' I desired all to withdraw ; then told her that we 
were to part forever ; that as Christians, we should part 
with prayer; and that I would, if she was willing, say 
a short prayer beside her. She expressed great desire 
to hear me ; and held up her poor hands as she lay in 
bed, with great fervour, while I prayed kneeling by 
her. * * 

' I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the 
greatest pain she had ever felt, and that she hoped we 
should meet again in a better place. I expressed with 
swelled eyes and great emotion of tenderness, the same 
hopes. We kissed and parted ; I humbly hope, to meet 
again, and to part no more.' Tears trickling down the 
granite rock : a soft well of Pity springs within ! — Still 
more tragical is this other scene: 'Johnson mentioned 
that he could not in general accuse himself of having 
been an undutiful son. "Once, indeed," said he, "I 
was disobedient : I refused to attend my father to 
Uttoxeter market. Pride was the source of that refusal, 
and the remembrance of it was painful. A few years 
ago I desired to atone for this fault." ' — But by what 
method ? — what method was now possible ? Hear it ; 
the words are again given as his own, though here 
evidently by a less capable reporter : 

* Madam, I beg your pardon for the abruptness of 
my departure in the morning, but I was compelled to it 
b)^ conscience. Fifty years ago. Madam, on this day, 
I committed a breach of filial piety. My father had 
been in the habit of attending Uttoxeter market, and 
opening a stall there for the sale of his Books. Con- 
fined by indisposition, he desired me, that day, to go 



Ilg THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

and attend the stall in his place. My pride prevented 
me ; I gave my father a refusal. — And now to-day have I 
been at Uttoxeter ; I went into the market, at the time 
of business, uncovered my head, and stood with it bare, 
for an hour, on the spot where my father's stall used to 
stand. In contrition I stood, and I hope the penance 
was expiatory.' 

Who does not figure to himself this spectacle, amid 
the 'rainy weather, and the sneers,' or wonder 'of the 
bystanders'? The memory of old Michael Johnson, 
rising from the far distance ; sad- beckoning in the 
'moonlight of memory': how he had toiled faithfully 
hither and thither ; patiently among the lowest of the 
low ; been buffeted and beaten down, yet ever risen 
again, ever tried it anew — And oh ! when the wearied 
old man, as Bookseller, or Hawker, or Tinker, or what- 
soever it was that Fate had reduced him to, begged 
help of thee for one day, — how savage, diabolic, was 
that mean Vanity, which answered, No ! He sleeps 
now ; after life's fitful fever, he sleeps : but thou, O 
Merciless, how now wilt thou still the sting of that 
remembrance ? — The picture of Samuel Johnson stand- 
ing bare-headed in the market there, is onfe of the 
grandest and saddest we can paint. Repentance ! 
Repentance ! he proclaims, as with passionate sobs : 
but only to the ear of Heaven, if Heaven will give him 
audience : the earthly ear and heart, that should have 
heard it, are now closed, unresponsive forever. —M. 
Bos-well. 

BOS WELL. 
BoS^YELL was a person whose mean or bad qualities 
lay open to the general eye : visible, palpable to the 
dullest. His good qualities, again, belonged not to the 
Time he lived in ; were far from common then ; indeed, 
in such a degree, were almost unexampled ; not recog- 
nisable therefore by every one ; nay, apt even (so 
strange had they grown) to be confounded with the 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. I ig 

very vices they lay contiguous to, and had sprung out 
of. That he was a wine-bibber and gross Uver ; glut- 
tonously fond off whatever would yield him a little so- 
lacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is un- 
deniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a bab- 
bler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the 
braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading 
dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the 
Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him ; 
that he appeared at the Shakspeare Jubilee with a rib- 
and, imprinted 'CORSICA BOSWELL,' round his hat; 
and, in short, if you will, lived no day of his Hfe without 
doing and saying more than one pretentious ineptitude: 
all this unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. The 
very look of Boswell seems to have signified so much. 
In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his 
weaker fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of 
coming pleasure, and scent it from afar ; in those bag- 
cheeks, hanging like half-filled wine-skins, still able to 
contain more ; in that coarsely protracted shelf-mouth, 
that fat dewlapped chin ; in all this, who sees not sen- 
suality, pretension, boisterous imbecility enough ; much 
that could not have been ornamental in the temper of 
a great man's over-fed great man (what the Scotch 
name ^ini^f) though it had been more natural there? 
The under part of Boswell's face is of a low, almost 
brutish character. 

Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and 
genuine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. 
That Boswell was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, 
that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and 
crawled to be near them ; that he first (in old Touch- 
wood Auchinleck's phraseology) "took on with Paoli;" 
and then being off with " the Corsican landlouper," took 
on with a schoolmaster, " ane that ke'eped a schule, 
and ca'd it an academy : " that he did all this, and could 
not help doing it, we account a very singular merit. 



120 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

The man, once for all, had an 'open sense,' an open 
loving heart, which so few have : when Excellence ex- 
isted, he was compelled to acknowledge it ; was drawn 
towards it, and (let the old sulphur-brand of a Laird say 
what he liked) could not but walk with it, — if not as 
superior, if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey, 
better so than not at all. * * * * In fact, the so copi- 
ous terrestrial dross that welters chaotically, as the outer 
sphere of this man's character, does but render for us 
more remarkable, more touching, the celestial spark of 
goodness, of light, and Reverence for Wisdom, which 
dwelt, in the interior, and could struggle through such 
encumbrances, and in some degree illuminate and beau- 
tify them. There is much lying yet undeveloped in the 
love of Boswell for Johnson. A cheering proof, in a 
time which else utterly wanted and still wants such, 
that living Wisdom is quite infinitely precious to man, 
is the symbol of the Godlike to him, which even weak 
eyes may discern ; that Loyalty, Discipleship, all that 
was ever meant by He7'o- Worship, lives perennially in 
the human bosom, and waits, even in these dead days, 
only for occasions to unfold it, and inspire all men with 
it, and again make the world alive ! James Boswell we 
can regard as a practical witness, or real martyr, to this 
high everlasting truth. A wonderful martyr, if you will; 
and in a time which made such martyrdom doubly won- 
derful : yet the time and its martyr perhaps suited each 
other. . For a decrepit, death-sick Era, when Cant had 
first decisively opened her poison-breathing lips to pro- 
claim that God- worship and. Mammon- worship were 
one and the same, that Life was a Lie, and the Earth 
Beelzebub's, which the Siiprcnie Quack should inherit; 
and so all things were fallen into the yellow leaf, and 
fast hastening to noisome corruption : for such an Era, 
perhaps no better Prophet than a parti-coloured Zany- 
Prophet, concealing, from himself and others, his pro- 
phetic significance in such unexpected vestures — was 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 121 

deserved, or would have been in place. A precious 
medicine lay hidden in floods of coarsest, most compos- 
ite treacle : the world swallowed the treacle, for it suited 
the world's palate ; and now, after half a century, may 
the medicine also begin to show itself! James Boswell 
belonged, in his corruptible part, to the lowest classes of 
mankind ; a foolish, inflated creature, swimming in an 
element of self-conceit: but in his corruptible there 
dwelt an incorruptible, all the more impressive and in- 
dubitable for the strange lodging it had taken. —M. Bos- 
well. 

Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, 
glaring mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, 
indeed, is man's Hfe generally but a kind of beast-god- 
hood ; the god in us triumphing more and more over 
the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under 
his feet ? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perenni- 
ally significant way, figure Nature itself, their sacred 
All, or Pan, as a portentous commingling of these 
two discords ; as musical, humane, oracular in its upper 
part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a 
goat ? The union of melodious, celestial Freewill and 
Reason with foul Irrationality and Lust ; in which, 
nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious unspeakable Fear and 
half-mad panic Awe ; as for mortals there well might ! 
And is not man a microcosm, or epitomised mirror of 
that same Universe ; or rather is not that Universe even 
Himself, the reflex of his own fearful and wonderful 
being, 'the waste fantasy of his own dream?' No 
wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell 
like the others, should resemble it ! The peculiarity in 
his case was the unusual defect of amalgamation and 
subordination : the highest lay side by side with the 
lowest; not morally combined with it, and spiritually 
transfiguring it, but tumbling in half-mechanical juxta- 
position with it, and from time to time, as the mad 
alternation chanced, irradiating it, or eclipsed by it. 



122 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

The world, as we said, has been but unjust to him ; 
discerning only the outer terrestrial and often sordid 
mass ; without eye, as it generally is, for his inner 
divine secret ; and thus fi-guring him nowise as a god 
Pan, but simply of the bestial species, like the cattle on 
a thousand hills. Nay, sometimes a strange enough 
hypothesis has been started of him ; as if it were in virtue 
even of these same bad qualities that he did his good 
work ; as if it were the very fact of his being among the 
worst men in this world that had enabled him to write 
one of the best books therein ! Falser hypothesis, we 
may venture to say, never rose in human soul. Bad is 
by its nature negative, and can do nothing ; whatso- 
ever enables us to do anything is by its very nature 
good. Alas, that there should be teachers in Israel, or 
even learners, to whom this world-ancient fact is still 
problematical, or even deniable ! Boswell wrote a good 
Book because he had a heart and an eye to discern 
Wisdom, and an utterance to render it forth ; because 
of his free insight, his lively talent, above all, of his 
Love and childlike Open-mindedness. His sneaking 
sycophancies, his greediness and forwardness, whatever 
was bestial and earthy in him, are so many blemishes 
in his Book, which still disturb us in its clearness ; 
wholly hindrances, not helps. Towards Johnson, how- 
ever, his feeling was not Sycophancy, which is the low- 
est, but Reverence, which is the highest of human feel- 
ings. None but a reverent man (which so unspeakably 
few are) could have found his way from Boswell's en- 
vironment to Johnson's : if such worship for real God- 
made superiors, showed itself also as worship for appar- 
ent Tailor-made superiors, even as hollow interested 
mouth-worship for such, — the case, in this composite 
human nature of ours, was not miraculous, the more 
was the pity ! But for ourselves, let every one of us 
cling to this last article of Faith, and know it as the 
beginning of all knowledge worth the name : That 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



123 



neither James Boswell's good Book, nor any other good 
tiling, in any time or in any place, was, is or can be 
performed by any man in virtue of his badness, but 
always and solely in spite thereof. —M. Bosiveil. 

BYRON. 
With longer life, all things were to have been hoped 
for from Byron : for he loved truth in his inmost heart, 
and would have discovered at last that his Corsairs and 
Harolds were not true. It was otherwise appointed. 

— M. State of German Literature. 

CERVANTES AND BYRON. 
A CERTAIN strong man, of former times, fought stoutly 
at Lepanto ; worked stoutly as Algerine slave ; stoutly 
delivered himself from such working ; with stout cheer- 
fulness endured famine and nakedness and the world's 
ingratitude ; and, sitting in jail, with the one arm left 
him, wrote our joyfullest, and all but our deepest, mod- 
ern book, and named it Don Quixote : this was a 
genuine strong man. A strong man, of recent time, 
fights little for any good cause anywhere ; works weakly 
as an English lord ; weakly delivers himself from such 
working ; with weak despondency endures the cackling 
of plucked geese at St. James's ; and, sitting in sunny 
Italy, in his coach-and-four, at a distance of two thou- 
sand miles from them, writes, over many reams of 
paper, the following sentence, with variations : Saw 
ever the world one greater or unhappier ? This was a 
sham strong man. Choose ye. — — M. Goethe's Works. 

BYRON AND BURNS. 
We hope we have now heard enough about the effi- 
cacy of wealth for poetry, and to make poets happy. 
Nay, have we not seen another instance of it in these 
very days ? Byron, a man of an endowment consider- 
ably less ethereal than that of Burns, is born in the rank 
not of a Scottish ploughman, but of an English peer : 
the highest worldly honors, the fairest worldly career, 



124 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY, 



are his by inheritance ; the richest harvest of fame he 
soon reaps, in another province, by his own hand. 
And what does all this avail him ? Is he happy, is he- 
good, is he true ? Alas, he has a poet's soul, and 
strives towards the Infinite and the Eternal ; and soon 
feels that all this is but mounting to the house-top to 
reach the stars ! Like Burns, he is only a proud man ; 
might, like him, have 'purchased a pocket-copy of 
Milton to study the character of Satan ; ' for Satan also 
is Byron's grand exemplar, the hero of his poetry, and 
the model apparently of his conduct. As in Burns's 
case too, the celestial element will not mingle with the 
clay of earth ; both poet and man of the world he 
must not be ; vulgar Ambition will not live kindly with 
poetic Adoration ; he caiuiot serve God and Mammon. 
Byron, like Burns, is not happy ; nay, he is the most 
wretched of all men. His life is falsely arranged : the 
fire that is in him is not a strong, still, central fire, 
warming into beauty the products of a world ; but it is 
the mad fire of a volcano ; and now, — we look sadly 
into the ashes of a crater, which ere long will fill itself 
with snow ! —M. Bums, 

BURNS. 

To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making 
man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding 
his own life was not given. Destiny, — for so in our 
ignorance we must speak, — his faults, the faults of oth- 
ers, proved too hard for him ; and that spirit, which 
might have soared could it but have walked, soon sank 
to the dust, its glorious faculties trodden under foot in 
the blossom ; and died, we may almost say, without 
ever having lived. And so kind and warm a soul ; so 
full of inborn riches, of love to all living and lifeless 
things ! How his heart flows out in sympathy over 
universal Nature ; and in her bleakest provinces discerns 
a beauty and a meaning! The 'Daisy' falls not un- 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



125 



heeded under his ploughshare ; nor the ruined nest of 
that 'wee, cowering, timorous beastie,' cast forth, after 
all its provident pains, to 'thole the sleety dribble and 
cranreuch cauld.' The 'hoar visage' of Winter delights 
him ; he dwells with a sad and oft-returning fondness 
in these scenes of solemn desolation ; but the voice of the 
tempest becomes an anthem to his ears ; he loves to 
walk in the sounding woods, for 'it raises his thoughts to 
Him that ivalketh on the wings of the wind.' A true 
Poet-soul, for it needs but to be struck, and the sound 
it yields will be music ! But observe him chiefly as he 
mingles with his brother men. What warm, all-com- 
prehending fellow-feeling : what trustful, boundless 
love ; what generous exaggeration of the object loved ! 
His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are no longer 
mean and homely, but a hero and queen, whom he 
prizes as the paragons of Earth. The rough scenes of 
Scottish life, not seen by him in any Arcadian illusion, 
but in the rude contradiction, in the smoke and soil of 
a too harsh reality, are still lovely to him : Poverty is 
indeed his companion, but Love also, and Courage ; the 
simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that dwell 
under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his 
heart: and thus over the lowest provinces of man's 
existence he pours the glory of his own soul ; and 
they rise, in shadow and sunshine, softened and 
brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not 
in the highest. He has a just self-consciousness, which 
too often degenerates into pride ; yet it is a noble pride, 
for defence, not for offence ; no cold suspicious feeling, 
but a frank and social one. The Peasant Poet bears 
himself, we might say, like a King in exile : he is cast 
among the low, and feels himself equal to the highest ; 
yet he claims no rank, that none may be disputed to 
him. The forward he can repel, the supercilious he 
can subdue ; pretensions of wealth or ancestry are 
of no avail with him ; there is a fire in that dark eye, 



126 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

under which the 'influence of condescension' cannot 
thrive. In his abasement, in his extreme need, he for- 
gets not for a moment the majesty of Poetry and 
Manhood. And yet, far as he feels himself above com- 
mon men, he wanders not apart from them, but mixes 
warmly in their interests ; nay, throws himself into theii 
arms, and, as it were, entreats them to love him. It is 
moving to see how, in his darkest despondency, this 
proud being still seeks reUef from friendship ; unbosoms 
himself, often to the unworthy ; and, amid tears, strains 
to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name 
of friendship. And yet he was * quick to learn;' a 
man of keen vision, before whom common disguises 
afforded no concealment. His understanding saw 
through the hollowness even of accomplished deceivers; 
but there was a generous credulity in his heart. And 
so did our Peasant show himself among us; 'a soul 
like an ^olian harp, in whose strings the vulgar wind, 
as it passed through them, changed itself into articulate 
melody.' And this was he for whom the world found 
no fitter business than quarrelling with smugglers and 
vintners, computing excise-dues on tallow, and gauging 
ale-barrels. In such toils was that mighty Spirit sor- 
rowfully wasted : and a hundred years may pass on, 
before another such is given us to waste. —M. Bums. 

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 

Friends to precision of Epithet will probably deny his 
title to the name 'great.' It seems to us there goes 
other stuff to the making of great men than can be 
detected here. One knows not what idea worthy of 
the name of great, what purpose, instinct or tendency, 
that could be called great, Scott ever was inspired with. 
His life was worldly ; his ambitions were worldly. 
There is nothing spiritual in him ; all is economical, 
material, of the "earth earthy. A love of picturesque, 
of beautiful, vigorous and graceful things ; a genuine 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 127 

love, yet not more genuine than has dwelt in hundreds 
of men named minor poets : this is the highest quahty 
to be discerned in him. His power of representing 
these things too, his poetic power, hke his moral power, 
was a genius in extcnso, as we may say, not in intenso. 
In action, in speculation, broad as he was, he was no- 
where high ; productive without measure as to quantity, 
in quality he for the most part transcended but a little 
way the region of commonplace. It has been said, 
'no man has written so many volumes with so few sen- 
tences that can be quoted.' Winged words were not 
his vocation ; nothing urged him that way ; the great 
Mystery of Existence was not great to him ; did not 
drive him into rocky solitudes to wrestle with it for an 
answer, to be answered or to perish. He had nothing 
of the martyr; into no 'dark region to slay monsters 
for us,' did he, either led or driven, venture down ; his 
conquests were for his own behoof mainly, conquests 
over common market-labour, and reckonable in good 
metallic coin of the realm. The thing he had faith in, 
except power, power of what sort soever, and even of 
the rudest sort, would be difficult to point out. One 
sees not that he believed in anything ; nay, he did not 
even disbelieve; but quietly acquiesced, and made him- 
self at home in a world of conventionalities ; the false, 
the semi-false and the true were alike true in this, that 
they were there, and had power in their hands more or 
less. It was well to feel so ; and yet not well ! We 
find it written, 'Woe to them that are at ease in Zion;' 
but surely it is a double woe to them that are at ease in 
Babel, in Domdaniel. On the other hand, he wrote 
many volumes, amusing many thousands of men. 
Shall we call this great? It seems to us there dwells 
and struggles another sort of spirit in the inward parts 
of great men. —M. Scott. 

Yet on the other hand, the surliest critic must allow 
that Scott was a genuine man, which itself is a great 



12$ THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

matter. No affectation, fantasticality, or distortion, 
dwelt in him ; no shadow of cant. Nay withal, was 
he not a right brave and strong man, according to his 
kind ? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity, 
he quietly bore along with him ; with what quiet 
strength he both worked on this earth, and enjoyed in 
it ; invincible to evil fortune and to good ! A most 
composed invincible man ; in difficulty and distress 
knowing no discouragement, Samson-like carrying off 
on his strong Samson-shoulders the gates that would 
imprison him ; in danger and menace laughing at the 
whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny current 
of true humou'r and humanity, a free joyful sympathy 
with so many things ; what of fire he had all lying so 
beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful inter- 
nal warmth of life ; a most robust, healthy man ! The 
truth is our best definition of Scott were perhaps even 
this, that he was, if no great man, then something much 
pleasanter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy and 
withal very prosperous and victorious man. An emi- 
nently well-conditioned man^ healthy in body, healthy 
in soul ; we will call him one of the healthiest of men. 

Or, on the whole, might we not say, Scott, in the new 
vesture of the nineteenth century, was intrinsically very 
much the old fighting Borderer of prior centuries ; the 
kind of man Nature did of old make in that birthland 
of his ? In the saddle, with the foray-spear, he would 
have acquitted himself as he did at the desk with his 
pen. One fancies how, in stout Beardie of Harden's 
time, he could have played Beardie's part ; and been the 
stalwart buff-belted terrcB filius he in this late time 
could only delight to draw. The same stout self-help 
was in him ; the same oak and triple brass round his 
heart. He too could have fought at Redswire, cracking 
crowns with the fiercest, if that had been the task ; 
could have harried cattle in Tynedale, repaying injury 
with compound interest ; a right sufficient captain of 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



129 



men, A man without qualms or fantasticalities ; a hard- 
headed, sound-hearted man of joyous robust temper, 
looking to the main chance, and fighting direct thither- 
ward ; valde stalwartiis homo ! — M. Scott. 

COLERIDGE. 

Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those 
years, [about 1828-9] looking down on London and 
its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity 
of life's battle ; attracting towards him the thoughts of 
innumerable brave souls still engaged there. His ex- 
press contributions to poetry, philosophy, or any spe- 
cific province of human literature or enlightenment, had 
been small and sadly intermittent ; but he had, espe- 
cially among young inquiring men, a higher than liter- 
ary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. He 
was thought to hold, he alone in England, the key of 
German and other Transcendentalisms ; knew the sub- 
lime secret of believing by 'the reason' what the 'under- 
standing ' had been obliged to fling out as incredible ; 
and could still, after Hume and Voltaire had done their 
best and worst with him, profess himself an orthodox 
Christian, and say and print to the Church of England, 
with its singular old rubrics and surplices at Allhallow- 
tide, Esto perpetua. A sublime man ; who alone in 
those dark days, had saved his crown of spiritual man- 
hood ; escaping from the dark materialisms, and revolu- 
tionary deluges, with 'God, Freedom, Immortality' 
still his: a king of men. The practical intellects of the 
world did not much heed him, or carelessly reckoned 
him a metaphysical dreamer : but to the rising spirits 
of the young generation he had this dusky sublime 
character ; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in 
mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak-grove (Mr. Gil- 
man's house at Highgate) whispering strange things, 
uncertain whether oracles or jargon. 

The Gilmans did not encourage much company, or 

9 



I30 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

excitation of any sort, round their sage ; nevertheless 
access to him, if a youth did reverently wish it, was not 
difficult. He would stroll about the pleasant garden 
with you, sit in the pleasant rooms of the place, — per- 
haps take you to his own peculiar room, high up, with a 
rearward view, which was the chief view of all. A 
really charming outlook, in fine weather. Close at 
hand, wide sweep of flowery leafy gardens, their few 
houses mostly hidden, the very chimney-pots veiled 
under blossomy umbrage, flowed gloriously down hill ; 
gloriously issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain-coun- 
try, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving 
blooming country of the brightest green ; dotted all over 
with handsome villas, handsome groves ; crossed by 
roads and human traffic, here inaudible or heard only 
as a musical hum : and behind all swam, under olive- 
tinted haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, 
with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's 
and the many memories attached to it hanging high 
over all. Nowhere, of its kind, could you see a grander 
prospect on a bright summer day, with the set of the 
air going southward, — southward, and so draping with 
the city- smoke not fou but the city. Here for hours 
would Coleridge talk, concerning all conceivable or 
inconceivable things ; and liked nothing better than to 
have an intelligent, or failing that, even a silent and 
patient human listener. He distinguished himself to all 
that ever heard him as at least the most surprising talker 
extant in this world, — and to some small minority, by 
no means to all, as the most excellent. 

The good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty 
perhaps ; and gave you the idea of a life that had been 
full of sufferings ; a life heavy-laden, half- vanquished, 
still swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical 
and other bewilderment. Brow and head were round, 
and of massive weight, but the face was flabby and ir- 
resolute. The deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



131 



of sorrow as of inspiration : confused pain looked mildly 
from them, as in a kind of mild astonishment. The 
whole figure and air, good and amiable otherwise, might 
be called flabby and irresolute ; expressive of weakness 
under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his 
limbs, with knees bent, and stooping attitude ; in walk- 
ing, he rather shuffled than decisively stepped : and a 
lady once remarked, he never could fix which side of 
the garden walk would suit him best, but continually 
shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. 
A heavy-laden, high-aspiring and surely much suffer- 
ing man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had con- 
tracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong ; he 
spoke as if preaching, — you would have said, preaching 
earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I 
still recollect his 'object' and 'subject,' terms of contin- 
ual recurrence in the Kantean province; and how he 
sang and snuffled them into "om-m-mject" and "sum- 
m-mject,' with a kind of solemn shake or quaver, as he 
rolled along. No talk, in his century or in any other, 
could be more surprising. —Sl /. 8. 

B/S TALK. 

To sit as a passive bucket and be pumped into, whether 
you consent or not, can in the long-run be exhilarating 
to no creature; how eloquent soever the flood of utter- 
ance that is descending. But if it be withal a confused 
unintelligible flood of utterance, threatening to submerge 
all known landmarks of thought, and drown the world 
and you ! — I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager 
musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and 
moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any 
individual of his hearers, — certain of whom, I for one, 
still kept eagerly listening in hope ; the most had long 
before given up, and formed (if the room were large 
enough) secondary humming groups of their own. He 
began anywhere : you put some question to him, made 



132 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



some suggestive observation : instead of answering this, 
or decidedly setting out towards answer of it, he would 
accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, 
transcendental life-preservers and other precautionary 
and vehiculatory gear, for setting out ; perhaps did at 
last get under way, — but was swiftly solicited, turned 
aside by the glance of some radiant new game on th's 
hand or that, into new courses ; and ever into new; and 
before long into all the Universe, Avhere it was uncertain 
what game you would catch, or whether any. 

His task, alas, was distinguished like himself, by irres- 
olution : it disliked to be troubled with conditions, ab- 
stinences, definite fulfilments ; — loved to wander at its 
own sweet will, and make its auditor and his claims and 
humble wishes a mere passive bucket for itself! He 
had knowledge about many things and topics, much 
curious reading; but generally all topics led him, after 
a pass or two, into the high seas of theosophic philoso- 
phy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean transcendentalism, 
with its 'sum-m-mjects' and 'om-m-mjectS;' Sad 
enough ; for with such indolent impatience of the claims 
and ignorances of others, he had not the least talent for 
explaining this or anything unknown to them ; and you 
swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide unintelligible 
deluge of things, for most part in a rather profitless 
uncomfortable manner. 

Glorious islets, too, I have seen rise out of the haze ; 
but they were few, and soon swallowed in the general 
element again. Balmy sunny islets, islets of the blest 
and the intelligible: — on which occasions those second- 
ary humming groups would all cease humming, and 
hang breathless upon the eloquent words ; till once 
your islet got wrapt in the mist again, and they could 
recommence humming. Eloquent artistically expres- 
sive words you always had ; piercing radiances of a 
most subtle insight come at intervals ; tones of noble 
pious sympathy, recognisable as pious though strangely 



PORTRAITS AND CHARACTERS. 



133 



coloured, were never wanting long : but in general you 
could not call this aimless, cloudcapt, cloudbased, law- 
lessly meandering human discourse of reason by the 
name of 'excellent talk,' but only of 'surprising '; and 
were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account of it: "Ex- 
cellent talker, very, — if you let him start from no prem- 
ises and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was not 
witiiout what talkers call wit, and there were touches 
of prickly sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of thp 
world and its idols and popular dignitaries ; he has 
traits even of poetic humour : but in general he seemed 
deficient in laughter ; or indeed in sympathy for con- 
crete human things either on the sunny or on the 
stormy side. One right peal of concrete laughter at 
some convicted flesh-and-blood absurdity, one burst of 
noble indignation at some injustice or depravity, rub- 
bing elbows with us on this solid Earth, how strange 
would it have been in that Kantean haze-world, and 
how infinitely cheering amid its vacant air-castles and 
dim-melting ghosts and shadows! None such ever 
came. His life had been an abstract thinking and 
dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts of defunct 
bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning singsong of 
that theosophic- metaphysical monotony left on you, at 
last, a very dreary feeling. — .5"^. /. 8. 

HIS CHARACTER. 

To the man himself Nature had given, in high measure, 
the seeds of a noble endowment A subtle lynx-eyed 
intellect, tremulous pious sensibility to all good and all 
beautiful; truly a ray of empyrean light; — but imbed- 
ded in such weak laxity of character, in such indolences, 
and esuriences as had made strange work with it. Once 
more the tragic story of a high endowment with an in- 
sufficient will. An eye to discern the divineness of the 
Heaven's splendours and lightnings, the insatiable wish 
to revel in their godlike radiances and brilliances ; but 



134 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



no heart to front the scathing terrors of them, which is 
the first condition of your conquering an abiding place 
there. The courage necessary for him, above all things, 
had been denied this man. His life, with such ray of 
the empyrean in it, was great and terrible to him ; and 
he had not valiantly grappled with it, he had fled from 
it; sought refuge in vague day-dreams, hollow com- 
promises, in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. Harsh 
pain, danger, necessity, slavish harnessed toil, were of 
all things abhorrent to him. And so the empyrean el- 
ement, lying smothered under the terrene, and yet in- 
extinguishable there, made sad writhings. For pain, 
danger, difficulty, steady slaving toil, and other highly 
disagreeable behests of destiny, shall in no wise be 
shirked by any brightest mortal that will approve him- 
self loyal to his mission in this world ; nay, precisely 
the higher he is, the deeper will be the disagreeableness, 
and the detestability to flesh and blood, of the tasks 
laid on him ; and the heavier too, and more tragic, his 
penalties if he neglect them. —Si. I. 8. 



III. 

LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY 
LIFE 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY 
LIFE. 



LITER A TURE. 
Could ambition always choose its own path, and were 
will in human undertakings synonymous with faculty, 
all truly ambitious men would be men of letters. Cer- 
tainly, if we examine that love of power which enters 
so largely into most practical calculations, nay which 
our Utilitarian friends have recognised as the sole end 
and origin, both motive and reward, of all earthly en- 
terprises, animating alike the philanthropist, the con- 
queror, the money-changer and the missionary, we 
shall find that all other arenas of ambition, compared 
with this rich and boundless one of Literature, meaning 
thereby whatever respects the promulgation of Thought, 
are poor, limited and ineffectual. For dull, unreflect- 
ive, merely instinctive as the ordinary man may seem, 
he nas nevertheless, as a quite indispensable appendage, 
a head that in some degree considers and computes ; a 
lamp or rushlight of understanding has been given 
him, which, through whatever dim, besmoked and 
strangely diffractive media it may shine, is the ultimate 
guiding light of his whole path : and here as well as 
there, now as at all times in man's history. Opinion 
rules the world. —M. Voltaire. 

137 



138 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



THE POWER OF LITERATURE. 

It has been said, and may be repeated, that Literature 
is fast becoming all in all to us ; our Church, our Senate, 
our whole Social Constitution. The true Pope of 
Christendom is not that feeble old man in Rome ; nor 
is its Autocrat the Napoleon, the Nicholas, with his 
half-million even of obedient bayonets : such Autocrat 
is himself but a more cunningly-devised bayonet and 
military engine in the hands of a mightier than he. 
The true Autocrat and Pope is that man, the real or 
seeming Wisest of the past age ; crowned after death ; 
who finds his Hierarchy of gifted Authors, his Clergy of 
assiduous Journalists ; whose Decretals, written not on 
parchment, but on the living souls of men, it were an 
inversion of the Laws of Nature to disohay. In these 
times of ours, all Intellect has fused itself into Litera- 
ture : Literature, Printed Thought, is the molten sea 
and wonder-bearing chaos,- into which mind after mind 
casts forth its opinion, its feeling, to be molten into the 
general mass, and to work there ; Interest after Interest 
is engulfed in it, or embarked on it : higher, higher it 
rises round all the Edifices of Existence ; they must all 
be molten into it, and anew bodied forth from it, or 
stand unconsumed among its fiery surges. Woe to him 
whose Edifice is not built of true Asbest, and on the 
everlasting Rock ; but on the false sand, and of the 
drift-wood of Accident, and the paper and parchment 
of antiquated habit! For the power, or powers, exist 
not on our Earth that can say to that sea, Roll back, 

or bid its proud waves be still. —M. Taylor's Survey. 
THE ANARCHY OF LITERATURE. 

Tfie polity of Literature is called a Republic ; oftener 
it is an Anarchy, where, by strength of fortune, favour- 
ite after favourite rises into splendour and authority, 
but, like Masaniello, while judging the people, is on the 
third day deposed and shot. Nay, few such adventur- 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. j^g 

ers can attain even this painful preeminence : fc r at 
most, it is clear, any given age can have but one first 
man ; many ages have only a crowd of secondary men, 
each of whom is first in his own eyes : and seldom, at 
best, can the 'Single Person' -long keep his station at 
the head of this wild commonwealth ; most sovereigns 
are never universally acknowledged, least of all in their 
lifetime ; few of the acknowledged can reign peaceably 
to the end. —M. Goethe. 

THE CHAOTIC CONDITION OF LITERATURE. 

Complaint is often" made, in these times, of what we 
call the disorganised condition of society : how ill many 
arranged forces of society fulfil their work ; how many 
powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, chaotic, 
altogether unarranged manner. It is too just a com- 
plaint as we well know. But perhaps if we look at this 
of Books and the Writers of Books, we shall find here, 
as it were, the summary of all other disorganisation ; — 
a sort of heart, from which and to which all other 
confusion circulates in the world ! Considering what 
Book-writers do in the world, and what the world does 
with Book-writers, I should say. It is the most anom- 
alous thing the world at present has to show. — * * 
Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay 
in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made 
endowments, regulations ; everywhere in the civilised 
world there is a Pulpit, environed with all manner of 
complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, that 
therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advan- 
tages, address his fellow-men. They felt that this was 
the most important thing; that without this there was 
no good thing. It is a right pious work, that of theirs ; 
beautiful to behold ! But now with the art of Writing, 
with the art of Printing, a total change has come over 
that business. The Writer of a Book, is not he a 
Preacher preaching not to this parish or that, on this 



140 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



day or that, but to all men in all times and places ? 
Surely it is of the last importance that he do his work 
right, whoever do it wrong; that the eye report not 
falsely, for then all the other members are astray ! 
Well ; how he may do his work, whether he do it right 
or wrong, or do it at all, is a point which no man in the 
world has taken the pains to think of To a certain 
shopkeeper, trying to get some money for his books, if 
lucky, he is of some importance ; to no other man of 
any. Whence he eame, whither he is bound, by what 
ways he arrived, by what he might be furthered on his 
course, no one asks. He is an accident in society. He 
wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a world of which he 
is as the spiritual light, either the guidance or the mis- 
guidance. —H. V. 

THE ART OF WRITING. 

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous 
of all things man has devised. Odin's Rimes * were the 
first form of the work of a Hero ; Books, written words, 
are still miraculous Riuies, the latest form! In Books 
lies the soul of the whole Past Time ; the articulate 
audible voice of the Past, when the body and material 
substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream. 
Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arsenals, vast 
cities, high-domed, many-engined, — they are precious, 
great : but what do they become ? Agamemnon, the 
many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their Greece ; all is 
gone now to some ruined fragments, dumb mournful 
wrecks and blocks : but the Books of Greece ! There 
Greece, to every thinker, still very literally lives : can 
be called up again into life. No magic Rune is stranger 
than a Book. All that Mankind has done, thought, 

* "Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. Runes, and the miracles of 
'magic' he worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandi- 
navian Alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, 3S. well as 
'magic,' among that people ! It is the greatest invention man has ever made, this of 
marking-down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind 
of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. If Odin brcught letters among 
his people, he might work magic enough ! " 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



141 



gained or been : it is lying as in magic preservation in 
the pages of Books. They are the chosen possession 
of men. 

Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Rimes 
were fabled to do ? They persuade men. Not the 
wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish girls 
thumb and con in remote villages, but will help to regu- 
late the actual practical weddings and households of 
those foolish girls. So 'Celia' felt, so 'Clifford' acted: 
the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped into those young 
brains, comes out as a solid Practice one day. Consider 
whether any Rwie in the wildest imagination of My- 
thologist ever did such wonders as, on the actual firm 
Earth, some Books have done ! What built St. Paul's 
Cathedral ? Look at the heart of the matter, it was 
that divine Hebrew Book, — the word partly of the 
man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, 
four-thousand years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai ! 
It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. With 
the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an in- 
evitable and comparatively insignificant corollary, the 
true reign of miracles for mankind commenced. It re- 
lated, with a wondrous new contiguity and perpetual 
closeness, the Past and Distant with the Present in time 
and place ; all times and all places with this our actual 
Here and Now. All things were altered for men ; all 
modes of important works of men : teaching, preach- 
ing, governing, and all else. —H. V. 

BOOKS AND UNIVERSITIES. 

To look at teaching for instance. Universities are a 
notable and respectable product of the modern ages. 
Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of it, 
by the existence of Books. Universities arose while 
there were yet no Books procurable ; while a man, for 
a single Book, had to give an estate of land. That, in 
those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge 



142 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learn- 
ets round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If 
you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go 
and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty 
thousand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical 
theology of his. And now for any other teacher who 
had also something of his own to teach, there was a 
great convenience opened : so many thousands eager 
to learn were already assembled yonder ; of all places 
the best for him was that. For any third teacher it was 
better still ; and grew ever the better, the more teach- 
ers there came. It only needed now that the king took 
notice of this new phenomenon ; combined or agglom- 
erated the various schools into one school ; gave it edi- 
fices, privileges, encouragements, and named it Univer- 
sitas, or School of all Sciences : the University of Paris, 
in its essential characters was there. The model of all 
subsequent Universities, which down even to this 
day, for six centuries now, have gone on to found them- 
selves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of Universi- 
ties. 

It is clear, however, that with this simple circum- 
stance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions 
of the business from top to bottom were changed. 
Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Univer- 
sities, or superseded them ! The Teacher needed not 
now to gather men personally round him, that he might 
speak to them what he knew : print it in a Book, and 
all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at hi? 
own fireside, much more effectually to learn it ! — Doubt- 
less there is still peculiar virtue in Speech ; even writers 
of Books may still, in some circumstances, find it con- 
venient to speak also. There is, one would say, ' and 
must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct 
province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. 
In regard to all things this must remain ; to Universi- 
ties among others. But the limits of the two have no- 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 143 

where yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put 
in practice : the University which would completely 
take-in that great new fact, of the existence of Printed 
Books, and stand on a clear footing for the Nineteenth 
Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not 
yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a 
University, or final highest School can do for us, is still 
but what the first School began doing, — teach us to 
read. We learn to read, in various languages, in vari- 
ous sciences ; we learn the alphabet and letters of all 
manner of Books. But the place where we are to get 
knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books 
themselves ! It depends on what we read, after all man- 
ner of Professors have done their best for us. The true 
University of these days is a Collection of Books. 
—H. V. 

BOOKS AND THE CHURCH. 
But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the intro- 
duction of Books. The Church is the working recog- 
nised Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who 
by wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there 
was no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing, 
or Printing, the preaching of the voice was the natural 
sole method of performing this. But now with Books! 
— He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, 
is he not the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of 
England and of all England ? I many a time say, the 
writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these 
are the real working effective Church of a modern coun- 
try. Nay, not only our preaching, but even our wor- 
ship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed 
Books ? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul has 
clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody 
into our hearts, — is not this essentially, if we will under- 
stand it, of the nature of worship ? There are many, 
in all countries, who, in this confused time, have no 



144 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



other method of worship. He who, in any way, shows 
us better than we knew before that a Hly of the fields is 
beautiful, does he not show it us.as an influence of the 
Fountain of all Beauty ; as the handwriting, made vis- 
ible there, of the great Maker of the Universe ? He 
has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of 
a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he 
who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our 
heart, the noble doings, feelings, darings and endurances 
of a brother man ! He has verily touched our hearts 
as with a live coal from the altar. Perhaps there is no 
worship more authentic. Literature, so far as it is Lit- 
erature, is an 'apocalypse of Nature,' a revealing of the 
'open secret.' It may well enough be named, in Pichte's 
style, a 'continuous revelation' of the Godlike in the 
Terrestrial and Common. The Godlike does ever, in 
very truth endure there ; is brought out, now in this 
dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness: 
all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or 
unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful indignation 
of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, may have touches 
of it; nay, the withered mockery of a French sceptic, — 
his mockery of the False, a love and worship of the 
True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a 
Shakspeare, of a Goethe ; the cathedral-music of a 
Milton ! They a«e something too, those humble gen- 
uine lark-notes of a Burns, — skylark, starting from the 
humble furrow, far overhead in the blue depths, and 
singing to us so genuinely there ! For all true singing is 
of the nature of worship; as indeed all true working 
may be said to be, — whereof such singing is but the 
record, and fit melodious representation, to us. Frag- 
ments of a real ' Church Liturgy' and 'Body of Homi- 
lies,' strangely disguised from the common eye, are to 
be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed 
Speech we loosely call Literature ! Books are our 
Church too. -H. V. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



1^5 



LITERATURE AND GOVERNMENT. 
Or turning now to the Government of men. Witen- 
agemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The afifairs 
of the nation were there deliberated and decided ; what 
we were to do as a nation. But does not, though the 
name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go 
on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more com- 
prehensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke 
said there were Three Estates in Parliament ; but, in 
the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Es- 
tate more important far than they all. It is not a figure 
of speech, or a witty saying ; it is a literal fact, — very 
momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Par- 
liament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of 
Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy : in- 
vent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings 
Printing; brings universal every-day extempore Print- 
ing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speak- 
ing now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a 
branch of government, with inalienable weight in law- 
making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what 
rank he has, what revenues or garnitures : the requisite 
thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen 
to ; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is 
governed by all that has tongue in the nation : Democ- 
/ racy is virtually there. Add only, that whatsoever 
power exists will have itself, by and by, organised ; 
working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstruc- 
tions it will never rest till it get to work free, unincum- 
bered, visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will 
insist on becoming palpably extant. —H. V. 

PHASES OF LITER A TURE. 

Literature, ever since its appearance in our Euro- 
pean world, especially since it emerged out of Cloisters 
into the open Market-place, and endeavoured to make 
itself roorti, and gain a subsistence there, has offered the 
lO 



146 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



strangest phases, and consciously or unconsciously done 
the strangest work. Wonderful Ark of the Deluge, 
where so much that is precious, nay priceless to man- 
kind, floats carelessly onwards through the chaos of 
distracted Times, — if so be it may one day find an Ara- 
rat to rest on, and see the waters abate ! The History 
of Literature, especially for the last two centuries, is oflr 
proper Church History ; the other Church, during that 
time, having more and more decayed from its old func- 
tions and influence, and ceased to have a history. And 
now to look only at the outside of the matter, think of 
the Tassos and older or later Racines, struggling to 
raise their office from its pristine abasement of court- 
jester; and teach and elevate the World, in conjunction 
with that other heteroclite task of solacing and glorifying 
some Pidlus Jovis, in plush cloak and other gilt or gold- 
en king-tackle, that they in the interim might live there- 
by ! Consider the Shakspeares and Molieres, plying a like 
trade, but on a double^ material ; glad of any royal or 
notable patronage, but eliciting, as their surer stay, some 
fractional contribution from the thick-skinned, many- 
pocketed million. Saumaises, now bully-fighting 'for 
a hundred gold Jacobuses,' now closeted with Queen 
Christinas, who blow the fire with their own queenly 
mouth, to make a pedant's breakfast; anon cast forth 
(being scouted and confuted), and dying of heart- 
break, coupled with hen-peck. Then the Laws of 
Copyright, the Quarrels of Authors, the Calamities of 
Authors ; the Heynes dining on boiled peasecods, the 
Jean Pauls on water ; the Johnsons bedded and boarded 
on four-pence-half-penny a-day. Lastly, the unutter- 
able confusion worse confounded of our present Period- 
ical existence ; when, among other phenomena, a 
young Fourth Estate (whom all the three elder may try 
if they can hold) is seen sprawling and staggering tu- 
multuously through the world ; as yet but a huge, raw- 
boned, lean calf; fast growing, however, to be a Pha- 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



147 



raoh's lean cow, — of whom let the fat kine beware ! 
All this of the mere exterior, or dwelling-place of Lit- 
erature, not yet glancing at the internal, at the Doc- 
trines emitted or striven after, will the future Eusebius 
and Mosheim have to record ; and (in some small de- 
gree) explain to us what it means. Unfathomable is its 
meaning: Life, mankind's Life, ever from its unfathom- 
able fountains, rolls wondrous on, another though the . 
same ; in Literature too, the seeing eye will distinguish 
Apostles of the Gentiles, Proto- and Deutero-mar- 
tyrs ; still less will the Simon Magus, or Apollonius 
with the golden thigh be wanting. But all now is on 
an infinitely wider scale ; the elements of it all swim 
far-scattered, and still only striving towards union ; 
— whereby, indeed, it happens that to the most, under 
this new figure, they are unrecognisable. —M. Diderot. 

SOLDIERS OF LITERA TURE. 

The strangest regiment in her Majesty's service, this 
of the Soldiers of Literature : — would your Lordship 
much like to march through Coventry with them ? The 
immortal gods are there (quite irrecognisable under 
these disguises), and also the lowest broken valets ; — an 
extremly miscellaneous regiment. In fact the regi- 
ment, superficially viewed, looks like an immeasurable 
motley flood of discharged playactors, funambulists, 
false prophets, drunken ballad-singers ; and marches 
not as a regiment, but as a boundless canaille, — without 
drill, uniform, captaincy or billet ; with huge ^7'^r-pro- 
portion of drummers ; you would say, a regiment gone 
wholly to the drum, with hardly a good musket to be 
seen in it, — more a canaille than a regiment. Canaille 
of all the loud-sounding levities, and general winnow- 
ings of Chaos, marching through the world in a most 
ominous manner ; proclaiming, audibly if you have 
ears : " Twelfth hour of the Night ; ancient graves 
yawning; pale clammy Puseyisms screeching in their 



148 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



winding-sheets ; owls busy in the City regions ; many 
gobhns abroad! Awake, ye living; dream no more; 
arise to judgment ! Chaos and Gehenna are broken 
loose ; the Devil with his Bedlams must be flung in 
chains again, and the Last of the Days is about to 
dawn ! " Such is Literature to the reflective soul at 
this moment. —L. D. P. V. 

ORGANISATION. 

All this, of the importance and supreme importance 
of the man of Letters in modern Society, and how the 
Press is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the 
Senate, the Senatiis Acadcmiciis and much else, has 
been admitted for a good while ; and recognised often 
enough in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph 
and wonderment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by 
and by will have to give place to the Practical. If Men 
of Letters are so incalculably influential, actually per- 
forming such work for us from age to age, and even 
from day to day, then I think we may conclude that 
Men of Letters will not always wander like unrecog- 
nised, unregulated Ishmaelites among us ! Whatsoever 
thing, as I said above, has virtually unnoticed power 
will cast off its wrappages, bandages and step-forth 
one day with palpably articulated, universally visible 
power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the 
wages, of a function which is done by quite another: 
there can be no profit in this ; this is not right, it is 
wrong. And yet, alas, the making of it right — what a 
business, for long times to come ! Sure enough, this 
that we call Organisation of the Literary Guild is still a 
a great way ofl", incumbered by all manner of complex- 
ities. If you asked me what were the best possible or- 
ganisation for the Men of Letters in modern society; the 
arrangement of furtherance and regulation, grounded 
the most accurately on the actual facts of their position 
and of the world's position, — I should beg to say that 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



149 



the problem far exceeded my faculty ! It is not one 
man's faculty ; it is that of many successive men turned 
earnestly upon it, that will bring-out even an approxi- 
mate solution. What the best arrangement were none 
of us could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst ? 
I answer: This which we now have, that Chaos should 
sit umpire in it ; this is the worst. To the best, or 
any good one there is yet a long way. —H. V. 

THE POVERTY OF LITERARY MEN. 
One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliament- 
ary grants of money are by no means the chief thing 
wanted ! To give our Men of Letters stipends, endow- 
ments and all furtherance of cash, will do little toward 
the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing 
about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather 
that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor ; that 
there ought to be Literary Men poor, — to show 
whether they are genuine or not ! Mendicant Orders, 
bodies of good men doomed to beg, were instituted in the 
Christian Church ; a most natural and even necessary 
development of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself 
founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Cruci- 
fixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degrada- 
tion. We may say that he who has not known these 
things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they 
have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of school- 
ing. To beg, and go barefoot, in coarse woolen cloak 
with a rope round your loins, and be despised of all the 
world, was no beautiful business ; — nor an honourable 
one in any eye, till the nobleness of those who did so 
made it honoured of some ! Begging is not in our 
course at the present time : but for the rest of it, who 
will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for be- 
ing poor ? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know 
that outward profit, that success of any kind is not the 
goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned 



ISO 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every 
heart ; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart, — to 
be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from 
it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, 
made-out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. 
Who knows, but in that same 'best possible organisa- 
tion' as yet far off. Poverty may still enter as an im- 
portant element ? What if our Men of Letters, men 
setting up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still then, as they 
now are, a kind of 'involuntary monastic order' ; bound 
still to this same ugly Poverty, till they had tried what 
was in that too, till they had learned to make it do for 
them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do 
all. We must know the province of it, and confine it 
there ; and ever spurn it back when it wisehs to get 
farther. —H. V. 

SOCIETY— MONEY. 

The truth of the matter seems to be, that with the cult- 
ure of a genuine poet, thinker or other artist, the in- 
fluence of rank has no exclusive or even special con- 
cern. For men of action, for senators, public speakers, 
political writers, the case may be different ; but of such 
we speak not at present. Neither do we speak of imi- 
tators, and the crowd of mediocre men, to whom fash- 
ionable life sometimes gives an external inoffensiveness, 
often compensated by a frigid malignity of character. 
We speak of him who, from amid the perplexed and 
conflicting elements of their every-day existence, are to 
form themselves into harmony and wisdom, and show 
forth the same wisdom to others that exist along with 
them. To such a man, high life, as it is called, will be 
a province of human life, but nothing more. He will 
study to deal with it as he deals with all forms of mor- 
tal being; to do it justice, and to draw instruction from 
it ; but his light will come from a loftier region, or he 
wanders forever in darkness ; dwindles into a man of 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. j^j 

vers de societe, or attains at best to be a Walpole or a 
Caylus. Still less can we think that he is to be viewed 
as a hireling ; that his excellence will be regulated by 
his pay. ' Sufficiently provided for from within, he has 
need of little from without: ' food and, raiment, and an 
unviolated home, will be given him in the rudest land ; 
and with these, while the kind earth is round him, and 
the everlasting heaven is over him, the world has little 
more that it can give. Is he poor? So also were Ho- 
mer and Socrates : so was Samuel Johnson ; so was 
John Milton. Shall we reproach him with his poverty, 
and infer that, because he is poor, he must likewise be 
worthless ? God forbid that the time should ever come 
when he too shall esteem riches the synonym of good ! 
The spirit of Mammon has a wide empire ; but it can- 
not and must not be worshipped in the Holy of Holies. 
Nay, does not the heart of every genuine disciple of 
literature, however mean his sphere, instinctively deny 
this principle, as applicable either to himself or another ? 
Is it not rather true, as D'Alembert has said, that for 
every man of letters, who deserves that name, the 
motto and the watchword will be Freedom, Truth, 
and even this same POVERTY ; that if he fear the last, 
the two first can never be made sure to him ? — M. State 

of German Literature. 

POVERTY. 

Poverty, incessant drudgery and much worse evils, it 
has often been the lot of Poets and wise men to strive 
with, and their glory to conquer. Locke was ban- 
ished as a traitor ; and wrote his Essay on the Human 
Understanding sheltering himself in a Dutch garret 
Was Milton rich or at his ease when he composed Par- 
adise Lost ? Not only low, but fallen from a height ; 
not only poor but impoverished; in darkness and with 
dangers compassed round, he sang his immortal song, 
and found fit audience, though few. Did not Cervantes 
finish his work, a maimed soldier and in prison ? Nay, 



152 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



was not the Araticana, which Spain acknowledges as its 
Epic, written without even the aid of paper; on scraps 
of leather, as the stout fighter and voyager snatched any 
moment from that wild warfare ? —M. Bums. 

COURAGE. 
Let no man doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt 
the majesty of man's soul ; let no lonely unfriended son 
of genius despair ! Let him not despair ; if he have 
the will, the right will, then the power also has not 
been denied him. It is but the artichoke that will not 
grow except in gardens. The acorn is cast carelessly 
abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; 
on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies the tempest, 
and lives for a thousand years. — M. Heyne. 

THE POET'S LIFE. 
Every Poet, be his outward lot what it may, finds him- 
self born in the midst of Prose ; he has to struggle from 
the littleness and obstruction of an Actual world, into 
the freedom and infinitude of an Ideal ; and the history 
of such struggle, which is the history of his life, can- 
not be other than instructive. His is a high, laborious, 
unrequited, or only self-requited endeavour; Avhich, 
however, by the law of his being, he is compelled to 
undertake, and must prevail in, or be permanently 
wretched ; nay the more wretched, the nobler his gifts 
are. For it is the deep, inborn claim of his whole spir- 
■ itual nature, and will not, and must not go unanswered. 
His youthful unrest, that 'unrest of genius,' often so 
wayward in its character, is the dim anticipation of this ; 
the mysterious, all-powerful mandate, as from Heaven, 
to prepare himself, to purify himself, for the vocation 
wherewith he is called. And yet how few can fulfil 
this mandate, how few earnestly give heed to it ! Of 
the thousand jingling dilettanti, whose jingle dies with 
the hour which it harmlessly or hurtfully amused, we 
say nothing here : to these, as to the mass of men, such 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



153 



calls for spiritual perfection speak only in whispers, 
drowned without difficulty in the din and dissipation of 
the world. But even for the Byron, for the Burns, 
whose ear is quick for celestial messages, in whom 
'speaks the prophesying spirit,' in awful prophetic voice, 
how hard is it to 'take no counsel with flesh and blood,' 
and instead of living and writing for the Day that passes 
over them, live and write for the Eternity that rests and 
abides over them ; instead of living commodiously in 
the Half, the Reputable, the Plausible, 'to live resolutely 
in the whole, the Good, the True!'* Such Halfness, 
such halting between two opinions, such painful, alto- 
gether fruitless negotiating between Truth and False- 
hood, has been the besetting sin, and chief misery, of 
mankind in all ages. Nay in our age, it has christened 
itself Moderation, a prudent taking of the middle course; 
and passes current among us as a virtue. How virtu- 
ous it is, the withered condition of many a once ingen- 
uous nature that has Hved by this method ; the broken 
or breaking heart of many a noble nature that could 
not live by it, — speak aloud, did we but listen. 

—M. Schiller. 

POET AND PROPHET. 
Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern 
notions of them. In some old languages, again, the 
titles are synonymous ; Vatcs means both Prophet and 
Poet : and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well 
understood, have much kindred of meaning. Funda- 
mentally indeed they are still the same ; in this most 
important respect especially. That they have penetrated 
both of them into the sacred mystery of the Universe ; 
what Goethe calls the 'open secret.' "Which is the 
great secret?" asks one. — "The open secret," — open tc 
all, seen by almost none ! That divine mystery, which 
lies everywhere in all Beings, 'the Divine Idea of the 
World, that which lies at the bottom of Appearance,' as 

*/;« GaHzen, Guteti, H'ahren resolut zu leben. Goethe. 



154 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Fichte styles it; of which all Appearance, from the 
starry sky to the grass of the field, but especially the 
Appearance of Man and his work, is but the vesture, 
the embodiment that renders it visible. This divine 
mystery is in all times and in all places ; veritably is. 
In most times and places it is greatly overlooked; and 
the Universe, definable always in one or the other dia- 
lect, as the realised Thought of God, is considered a 
trivial, inert, commonplace matter, — as if, says the Sati- 
rist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had 
put together ! It could do no good, at present, to speak 
much about this ; but it is a pity for every one of us if 
we do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. 
Really a most mournful pity ; — a failure to live at all, if 
we live otherwise ! 

But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine mys- 
tery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has penetra- 
ted into it ; is a man sent hither to make it more im- 
pressively known to us. That always is his message ; 
he is to reveal that to us, — that sacred mystery which 
he more than others lives ever present with. While 
others forget it, he knows it ; — I might say he has been 
driven to know it; without consent asked of kiin, he finds 
hirhself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, 
here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and Belief; this 
man too could not help being a sincere man ! Who- 
soever may live in the shows of things, it is for him a 
necessity of nature to live in the very fact of things. A 
man, once more, in earnest with the Universe, though 
all others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first 
of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and 
Prophet, participators in the 'open secret,' are one. 

With respect to their distinction again : The Vates 
Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery 
rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and 
Prohibition ; the Vates Poet on what the Germans call 
the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the Hke. The one we 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 15^ 

may call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of 
what we are to love. But indeed these two provinces 
run into one another, and cannot be disjoined. The 
Prophet too has his eye on what we are to love : how 
else shall he know what it is we are to do ? The high- 
est Voice ever heard on this earth said withal, "Consider 
the lilies of the field ; they toil not, neither do they spin : 
yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
these." A glance, that, into the deepest deep of Beauty. 
'The lilies of the field,' dressed finer than earthly 
princes, springing up there in the humble furrgw-field, 
a beautiful eye looking-out on you, from the great inner 
Sea of Beauty. How could the rude Earth make these, 
if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not in- 
wardly Beauty ? — In this point of view, too, a saying 
of Goethe's, which "has staggered several, may have 
meaning; 'The Beautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher than 
the Good ; the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' The 
true Beautiful ; which however, I have said somewhere, 
' differs from the false, as Heaven does from Vauxhall ! ' 
— //. ///. 

DEFINITION OF POETRY, MUSIC. 
For my own part I find considerable meaning in the 
old vulgar distinction of Poetry being metrical, having 
music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to give a 
definition, one might say this as soon as anything else : 
If your delineation be authentically musical, musical 
not in word only, but in heart and substance, in all 
the thoughts and utterance of it, in the whole concep- 
tion of it, then it will be poetical ; if not, not. — Musical: 
how much lies in that ! A musical thought is one spo- 
ken by a mind that has penetrated into the inmost 
heart of the thing ; detected the inmost mystery of it, 
namely the ^nelody that lies hidden in it ; the inward 
harmony of coherence which is its soul, whereby it 
exists, and has a right to be, here in this world. All 
inmost things, we may say, are melodious ; naturally 



156 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

utter themselves in Song. The meaning of Song goes 
deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express 
the effect music has on us ? A kind of inarticulate un- 
fathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the 
Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ' * * * 
Observe too how all passionate language does of itself 
become musical, — with a finer music than the mere ac- 
cent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger be- 
comes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It 
seems somehow the very central Essence of us, Song ; 
as if all ^he rest were but wrappages and hulls ! The 
primal element of us, and of all things. The Greeks 
fabled of Sphere-Harmonies; it was the feeling they 
had of the inner structure of Nature ; that the soul of all 
her voices and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, 
therefore, we will call musical Thought. The Poet is 
he who thinks in that manner. At bottom it turns 
still on power of intellect ; it is a man's sincerity and 
depth of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep 
enough, and you see musically; the heart of Nature 
being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. 
~H. III. 

RHYTHM AND MELODY. 
Coleridge remarks very pertinently somewhere, that 
wherever you find a sentence musically worded, of true 
rhythm and melody in the words, there is something 
deep and good in the meaning too. For body and 
soul, word and idea, go strangely together here as 
everywhere. Song! we said before, it was the Heroic 
of Speech! All ^/<a^ poems, Homer's and the rest, are 
authentically Songs. I would say, in strictness, that 
all right Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung is 
properly no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into 
jingling lines, — to the great injury of the grammar, to 
the great grief of the reader for the most part ! What we' 
want to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any : 
why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak it 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 1^7 

out plainly? It is only when the heart of him is rapt 
into true passion of melody, and the very tones of him, 
according to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the 
greatness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can 
give him right to rhyme and sing; that we call him a 
Poet, and listen to him as the heroic of Speakers, 
— whose speech is Song. Pretenders to this are many; 
and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a 
very melancholy, not to say an insupportable business, 
that of reading rhyme! Rhyme that had no inward ne- 
cessity to be rhymed; — it ought to have told us plainly, 
without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would 
advise all men who can speak their thought, not to sing 
it; to understand that, in a serious time, among serious 
men, there is no vocation in them for singing it. Pre- 
cisely as we love the true song, and are charmed by it 
as by something divine, so shall we hate the false song, 
and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, 
superfluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. 
—H. III. 

CONDITION'S OF POETRY. 
Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making 
poets. We often hear of this and the other external 
condition being requisite for the existence of a poet. 
Sometimes it is a certain sort of training; he must have 
studied certain things, studied for instance, 'the elder 
dramatists,' and so learned a poetic language ; as if 
poetry lay in the tongue, not in the heart. At other 
times we are told, he must be bred in a certain rank, and 
must be on a confidential footing with the higher classes ; 
because, above all things he must see the world. As to 
seeing the world, we apprehend this will cause him little 
difficulty, if he have but eyesight to see it with. With- 
out eyesight, indeed, the task might be hard. The blind 
or the purblind man 'travels from Dan to Beersheba, and 
finds it all barren.' But happily every poet is born in 
the world ; and sees it, with or against his will, every 



1^8 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

day and every hour he lives. The mysterious workman- 
ship of man's heart, the true Hght and the inscrutable 
darkness of man's destiny, reveal themselves not only in 
capital cities and crowded saloons, but in every hut and 
hamlet where men have their abode. Nay, do not the 
elements of all human virtues and all human vices ; the 
passions at once of a Borgia and of a Luther, lie written, 
in stronger or fainter lines, in the consciousness of every 
individual bosom, that has practised honest self-examin- 
ation ? Truly, this same world may be seen in Mossgiel 
and Tarbolton, if we look well, as clearly as it ever came 
to light in Crockford's, or the Tuileries itself 

But sometimes still harder requisitions are laid on the 
poor aspirant to poetry ; for it is hinted that he should 
have been born two centuries ago ; inasmuch as poetry, 
about that date, vanished from the earth, and became no 
longer attainable by men ! Such cobweb speculations 
have, now and then, overhung the field of literature ; 
but they obstruct not the growth of any plant there : 
the Shakspeare or the Burns, unconsciously and merely 
as he walks onward, silently brushes them away. Is 
not every genius an impossibility till he appear ? Why 
do we call him new and original, if %ve saw when his 
marble was lying, and what fabric he could rear from it ? 
It is not the material but the workman that is wanting. 
It is not the dark place that hinders but the dim eye. A 
Scottish peasant's life was the meanest and rudest of all 
lives, till Burns became a poet in it, and a poet of it; found 
it a mans life, and therefore significant to men. A thou- 
sand battle-fields remain unsung ; but the Wounded Hare 
has not perished without its memorial ; a balm of mercy 
yet breathes on us from its dumb agonies, because a poet 
was there. Our Halloween had passed and repassed, in 
rude awe and laughter, since the era of the Druids ; but 
no Theocritus, till Burns, discerned in it the materials of 
a Scottish Idyl : neither was the Holy Fair any Coimcil 
of Trent or Roman Jubilee ; but nevertheless, Super- 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE.' j rg 

stitioii and Hypocrisy and Fun having been propitious 
to liim, in this man's hand it became a poem, instinct 
with satire and genuine comic life. Let but the true 
poet be given us, we repeat it, place him where and how 
you will, and true poetry will not be wanting. —M. 
Burns. 

UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF GENIUS. 

But on the whole, 'genius is ever a secret to itself;' of 
this old truth we have, on all sides, daily'evidence. The 
Shakspeare takes no airs for writing Hainlet and the 
Tempest, understands not that it is anything surprising : 
Milton, again, is more conscious of his faculty, which ac- 
cordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand, what 
cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, 
when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden 
speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged 
goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measurable 
value, were it the pink of its whole kind ; and wonders 

why all mortals do not wonder ! —M. Characteristics. 
EASY WRITING. 

In the way of writing, no great thing was ever, or will 
ever be done with ease, but with difficulty ! Let ready 
writers with any faculty in them lay this to heart. Is it 
with ease, or not with ease, that a man shall do his best, 
in any shape ; above all, in this shape justly named of 
* soul's travail,' working in the deep places of thought, 
embodying the True out of the Obscure and Possible, 
environed on all sides with the uncreated false ? Not so, 
now or at any time. The experience of all men belies 
it ; the nature of things contradicts it. Virgil and Tacitus, 
were they ready writers ? Shakspeare, we may fancy, 
wrote with rapidity ; but not till he had thought with 
intensity : long and sore had this man thought, as the 
seeing eye may discern well, and had dwelt and wrestled 
amid dark pains and throes, — though his great soul is 
silent about all that. It was for him to write rapidly at fit 



,5o THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

intervals, being ready to do it. And herein truly lies 
the secret of the matter : such swiftness of mere writing, 
after due energy of preparation, is doubtless the right 
method ; the hot furnace having long worked and sim- 
mered, let the pure gold flow out at one gush. It was 
Shakspeare's plan ; no easy writer he, or he had never 
been a Shakspeare. Neither was Milton one of the mob 
of gentlemen that write with ease ; he did not attain Shak- 
speare's faculty, one perceives, of even writing fast after 
long preparation, but struggled while he wrote. Goethe 
also tells us he 'had nothing sent him in his sleep ;' no 
page of his but he knew well how it came there. It is 
reckoned to be the best prose, accordingly, that has been 
written by any modern. Schiller, as an unfortunate and 
unhealthy man, ' Konnte nie fertig werden, never could 
get done ;' the noble genius of him struggled not wisely 
but too well, and wore his life itself heroically out. Or 
did Petrarch write easily ? Dante sees himself ' growing 
lean' over his Divine Comedy; in stern solitary death- 
wrestle with it, to prevail over it, and do it, if his utter- 
most faculty may : hence, too, it is done and prevailed 
over, and the fiery life of it endures forevermore among 
men. No : creation, one would think, cannot be easy ; 
your Jove has severe pains, and fire-flames, in the head 
out of which an armed Pallas is struggling ! As for 
manufacture, that is a different matter, and may become 
easy or not easy, according as it is taken up. Yet of 
manufacture too, the general truth is that, given the man- 
ufacturer, it will be worthy in direct proportion to the 
pains bestowed upon it ; and worthless always, or nearly 
so, with no pains. —M. Scott. 

SOME VER Y READ Y WRITERS. 

To write with never such rapidity in a passable manner, 
is indicative not of a man's genius, but of his habits; 
it will prove his soundness of nervous system, his prac- 
ticality of mind, and in fine that he has the knack of 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. igj 

his trade. In the most flattering view, rapidity will be- 
token health of mind: much also, perhaps most of all, 
will depend on health of body. Doubt it not, a faculty 
of easy writing is attainable by man ! The human gen- 
ius, once fairly set in this direction, will carry it far. 
William Cobbett, one of the healthiest of men, was a 
greater improviser ever than Walter Scott: his writing, 
considered as to quality and quantity, of Rural Rides, 
Registers, Grammars, Sermons, Peter Porcupines, His- 
tories of Reformation, ever-fresh denouncements of Po- 
tatoes and Paper-money, — seems to us still more won- 
derful. Pierre Bayle wrote enormous folios, one sees not 
on what motive-principle ; he flowed-on forever, a 
mighty tide of ditch-water; and even died flowing, with 
the pen in his hand. But indeed the most unaccountable 
ready-writer of all is, probably, the common Editor of 
a Daily Newspaper. Consider his leading articles; 
what they treat of, how passably they are done. Straw 
that has been thrashed a hundred times without wheat; 
ephemeral sound of a sound ; such portent of the hour 
as all men have seen a hundred times turn out inane: 
how a man, with merely human faculty, buckles him- 
self nightly with new vigour and interest to this thrash- 
ed straw, nightly thrashes it anew, nightly gets- up new 
thunder about it; and so goes on thrashing and thun- 
dering for a considerable series of years; this is a fact re- 
maining still to be accounted for, in human physiology. 
The vitality of man is great —M. Scott. 

A GREAT DISCOVERY TO BE MADE IN 
LITER A TORE. 

There is a great discovery still to be made in Litera- 
ture, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do 
not write. Nay, in sober l^uth, is not this actually the 
rule in all writing; and, moreover, in all conduct and 
acting? Not what stands above ground but what lies 
unseen under it, as the root and subterrene element it 
II 



1 62 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. ' 

sprang from and emblemed forth, determines the value. 
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a 
silence that is better. Silence .is deep as Eternity; 
Speech is shallow as Time. —M. Scott. 

OH I GIN OF FOE my. 

Poetry is one of those mysterious things whose origin 
and developments never can be what we call explained ; 
often it seems to us like the wind, blowing where it lists, 
coming and departing with little or no regard to any 
the most cunning theory that has yet been devised of 
it. Least of all does it seem it depend on court-patron- 
age, the form of a government, or any modification of 
politics or economics, catholic as these influences have 
now become in our philosophy: it lives in a snow-clad 
sulphurous Iceland, and not in a sunny wine-growing 
France ; flourishes under an arbitrary Elizabeth, and dies 
out under a constitutional George ; Philip II. has his 
Cervantes, and in prison ; Washington and Jackson 
have only their Coopers and Browns. Why did Poetry 
appear so brightly after the Battle of Thermopylae and 
Salamis, and quite turn away her face and wings from 
those of Lexington and Bunker's Hill ? We answer, 
The Greeks were a poetical people, the Americans are 
not ; that is to say, it appeared because it did appear ! 
On the whole, we could desire that one of two things 
should happen : Either that our theories and genetic 
histories of Poetry should henceforth cease, and man- 
kind rest satisfied, once for all, with Dr. Cabanis' theory, 
which seems to be the simplest, that 'Poetry is a prod- 
uct of the smaller intestines,' and must be cultivated 
medically by the exhibition of castor-oil : Or else that, 
in future speculations of this kind, we should endeavour 
to start with some recognjtion of the fact, once well 
known, and still in words admitted, that Poetry is In- 
spiration ; has in it a certain spirituality and divinity 
which no dissecting-knife will discover; arises in the 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 163 

most secret and most sacred region of man's soul, as it 
were in our Holy of Holies; and as for external things, 
depends only on such as can operate in that region ; 
among which it will be found that Acts of Parliament, 
and the state of the Smithfield Markets, nowise play the 

chief part. — M. Early Germa/t Litcmlure. 

PROGRESS OF POETRY. 

In the history of the universal mind, there is a certain 
analogy to that of the individual. Our first self-con- 
sciousness is the first revelation to us of a whole uni- 
verse, wondrous and altogether good : it is a feeling of 
joy and new-found strength, of mysterious infinite hope 
and capability ; and in all men, either by word or act, 
expresses itself poetically. The world without us and 
within us, beshone by the young light of Love, and all 
instinct with a divinity, is beautiful and great ; it seems 
for us a boundless happiness that we are privileged to 
live. This is the season of generous deeds and feelings ; 
which also, on the lips of the gifted, form themselves 
into musical utterance, and give spoken poetry as well 
as acted. Nothing is calculated and measured, but all 
is loved, believed, appropriated. All action is spontane- 
ous, high sentiment a sure, imperishable good ; and 
thus the youth stands, like the First Man, in his fair 
Garden, giving Names to the bright Appearances of this 
Universe which he has inherited, and rejoicing in it as 
glorious and divine. Ere long, however, comes a harsher 
time. Under the first beauty of man's life appears an 
infinite, earnest rigour: high sentiment will not avail, 
unless it can continue to be translated into noble action; 
which problem, in the destiny appointed to man born 
to toil, is difficult, interminable, capable of only approx- 
imate solution. What flowed softly in melodious cohe- 
rence when seen and sung from a distance, proves rug- 
ged and unmanageable when practically handled. The 
fervid, lyrical gladness of past years give place to a col- 



1 64 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



lected thoughtfulness and energy ; nay often, — so pain- 
ful, so unexpected are the contradictions everywhere 
met with, — to gloom, sadness and anger ; and not till 
after long struggles and hard contested victories is the 
youth changed into a man. 

Without pushing the comparison too far, we may say 
that in the culture of the European mind, or in Litera- 
ture which is the symbol and product of this, a certain 
similarity of progress is manifested. That tuneful Chiv- 
alry, that high cheerful devotion to the Godlike in 
Heaven, and to Women, its emblems on earth ; those 
Crusades and vernal Love- songs were the heroic doings 
of the world's youth; to which also a corresponding 
manhood succeeded. Poetic recognition is favoured by 
scientific examination : the reign of Fancy, with its gay 
images, and graceful, capricious sports, has ended ; and 
now Understanding, which when reunited to Poetry, 
will one day become Reason and a nobler Poetry, has 

to do its part. — M. Early German Literature. 
TASTE. 

Taste, if it mean anything but a paltry connoisseur- 
ship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and 
nobleness ; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and 
reverence, all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever or in 
whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be 
seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not 
any given external rank or situation, but a finely gifted 
mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness 
and justness of vision ; above all, kindled into love and 
generous admiration. Is culture of this sort found ex- 
clusively among the higher ranks ? We believe it pro- 
ceeds less from without than from within, in every rank. 
The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the infinite 
loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the 
eye of the poor ; but from the eye of the vain, the cor- 
rupted and self-seeking, be he poor or rich. In old ages. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



165 



the humble Minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing 
but his harp and his own free soul, had intimation of those 
glories, while to the proud Baron in his barbaric halls they 
were unknown. Nor is there still any aristocratic mo- 
nopoly of judgment more than of genius: for as to that 
Science of Negation, which is taught peculiarly by men 
of professed elegance, we confess we hold it rather 
cheap. It is a necessary, but decidedly a subordinate 
accomplishment ; nay, if it be rated as the highest, it be- 
comes a ruinous vice. This is an old truth ; yet ever 
needing new application and enforcement. Let us know 
what to love, and we shall know also what to reject : 
what to affirm, and we shall know also what to deny : 
but it is dangerous to begin with denial, and fatal to end 
with it. To deny is easy ; nothing is sooner learnt or 
more generally practised : as matters go, we need no 
man of polish to teach it ; but rather, if possible, a hun- 
dred men of wisdom to show us its limits, and teach us 
its reverse. 

Such is our hypothesis of the case : how stands it with 
the facts ? Are the fineness and truth of sense man- 
ifested by the artist found, in most instances, to be pro- 
portionate to his wealth and elevation of acquaintance ? 
Are they found to have any preceptible relation either 
with the one or the other ? We imagine, not. Whose 
taste in painting, for instance, is truer and finer than 
Claude Lorraine's ? And was he not a poor colour- 
grinder ; outwardly the meanest of menials ? Where, 
again, we might ask, lay Shakspeare's rent-roll ; and 
what generous peer took him by the hand and unfolded 
to him the 'open secret' of the Universe; teaching him 
that this was beautiful, and that not so ? Was he not a 
peasant by birth, and by fortune something lower ; and 
was it not thought much, even in the height of his rep- 
utation, that Southampton allowed him equal patronage 
with the zanies, jugglers and bearwards of the time ? 
Yet compare his taste, even as it respects the negative 



1 55 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

side of things ; for, in regard to the positive and far 
higher side, it admits no comparison with any other 
mortal's, — compare it, for instance, with the taste of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men of 
rank and education, and of fine genius like himself 
Tried even by the nice, fastidious and in great part false 
and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it 
with the two parties ; with the gay triumphant men of 
fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy? Does the lat- 
ter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as 
the former do ? For one line, for one word, which 
some Chesterfield might wish blotted from the first, are 
there not in the others, whole pages and scenes which, 
with palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest 
night ? This too, observe, respects not their genius, 
but their culture ; not their appropriation of beauties, 
but their rejection of deformities, by supposition the 
grand and peculiar result of high breeding ! Surely, in 
such instances, even ihat humble supposition is ill borne 

out. — M. State of German Literature. 
READING. 

Directly in the teeth of most 'intellectual tea-circles,' 
it may be asserted that no good Book, or good thing of 
any sort, shows its best face at first ; nay, that the com- 
monest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence 
have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it oc- 
casions a certain disappointment ; perhaps even, mingled 
with its undeniable beauty, a certain feeling of aversion. 
Not as if we meant, by this remark, to cast a stone at the 
old guild of Literary Improvisators, or any of that dili- 
gent brotherhood, whose trade it is to blow soap-bubbles 
for their fellow-creatures ; which bubbles, of course, if 
they are not seen and admired this moment, will be al- 
together lost to men's eyes the next. Considering the 
use of these blowers in civilized communities, we rather 
wish them strong lungs, and all manner of prosperity : 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 167 

but simply we would contend that such soap-bubble 
guild should not become the sole one in Literature ; 
that being indisputably the strongest it should content 
itself with this pre-eminence, and not tyrannically an- 
nihilate its less prosperous neighbors. For it should be 
recollected that Literature positively has other aims than 
this of amusement from hour to hour ; nay perhaps that 
this, glorious as it may be, is not its highest or true aim. 
We do say, therefore, that the Improvisator Corporation 
should be kept within limits ; and readers, at least a cer- 
tain small class of readers, should understand that some 
few departments of human inquiry have still their depths 
and difficulties; that the abstruse is not precisely synony- 
mous with the absurd ; nay that light itself may be 
darkness, in a certain state of eyesight ; that, in short, 
cases may occur when a little patience and some at- 
tempt at thought would not be altogether superfluous 
in reading. Let the mob of gentlemen keep their own 
ground, and be happy and applauded there : if they 
overstep that ground, they indeed may flourish the bet- 
ter for it, but the reader will suffer damage. For in 
this way, a reader, accustomed to see through every- 
thing in one second of time, comes to forget that his 
wisdom and critical penetration are finite and not infi- 
nite ; and so commits more than one mistake in his con- 
clusions. The Reviewer too, who indeed is only a pre- 
paratory reader, as it were a sort of sieve and drainer 
for the use of more luxurious readers, soon follows his 
example : these two react still farther on the mob of 
gentlemen ; and so among them all, with this action 
and reaction, matters grow worse and worse. —M. 

Nova lis. 

TWO WAYS OF REVIEWING. 

In what is called reviewing such a book as this [Nova- 
lis], we are aware that to the judicious craftsman two 
methods present themselves. The first and most con- 



]68 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

venient is, for the Reviewer to perch himself resolutely, 
as it were, on the shoulder of his Author, and therefrom 
to show as if he commanded him and looked down on 
him by natural superiority of stature. Whatsoever the 
great man says or does, the little man shall treat with an 
air of knowingness and light condescending mockery ; 
professing, with much covert sarcasm, that this and that 
other is beyond his comprehension, and cunningly ask- 
ing his readers if they comprehend it ! Herein it will 
help him mightily, if, besides description, he can quote 
a few passages, which, in their detached state, and taken 
most probably in quite a wrong acceptation of the words, 
shall sound strange, and, to certain hearers, even absurd ; 
all which will be easy enough, if he have any handiness 
in the business, and address the right audience ; truths, 
as this world goes, being true only for those that have 
some understanding of them ; as, for instance, in the 
Yorkshire Wolds, and Thames Coal-ships, Christian men 
enough might be found, at this day, who, if you read 
them the Thirty-Ninth of the Principia, would 'grin in- 
telligence from ear to ear.' On the other hand, should 
our Reviewer meet with any passage, the wisdom of 
which, deep, plain and palpable to the simplest, might 
cause misgivings in the reader, as if here were a man of 
half- unknown endowment, whom perhaps it were better 
to wonder at than laugh at, our Reviewer either sup- 
presses it, or citing it with an air of meritorious candour, 
calls upon his Author, in a tone of command and of en- 
couragement, to lay aside his transcendental crotchets, 
and write always thus, and Jie will admire him. Whereby 
the reader again feels comforted ; proceeds swimmingly 
to the conclusion of the 'Article,' and shuts it with a 
victorious feeling, not only that he and the Reviewer 
understand this man, but also that, with some rays of 
fancy and the like, the man is little better than a living 
mass of darkness. 

In this way does the small Reviewer triumph over 
great Authors ; but it is the triumph of a fool. In this 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



169 



way too does he recommend himself to certain readers, 
but it is the recommendation of a parasite, and of no 
true servant. The servant would have spoken truth, in 
this case ; truth, that it might have profited, however 
harsh : the parasite glozes his master with sweet 
speeches, that he may filch applause, and certain 'guineas 
per sheet,' from him ; substituting for ignorance which 
was harmless, error which is not so. And yet to the 
vulgar reader, naturally enough, that flattering unction is 
full of solacement. In fact, to a reader of this sort few 
things can be more alarming than to find that his own 
little Parish, where he lived so snug and absolute, is, 
after all, not the whole Universe ; that beyond the hill 
which screened his house from the west wind, and grew 
his kitchen-vegetables so sweetly, there are other hills 
and other hamlets, nay mountains and towered cities ; 
with all which, if he would continue to pass for a geog- 
rapher, he must forthwith make himself acquainted. 
Now this Reviewer, often his fellow Parishioner, is a safe 
man ; leads him pleasantly to the hilltop ; shows him 
that indeed there are, or seem to be, other expanses, 
these too of boundless extent : but with only cloud- 
mountains, and fata morgana cities ; the true character 
of that region being Vacuity, or at best a stony desert 
tenanted by Gryphons and Chimeras. 

Surely, if printing is not, like courtier speech, the 'art 
of concealing thought,' all this must be blamable enough. 
Is it the Reviewer's real trade to be a pander of laziness, 
self-conceit and all manner of contemptuous stupidity 
on the part of his readers ; carefully ministering to these 
propensities ; carefully fencing off whatever might in- 
vade that fool's paradise with news of disturbance ? Is 
h'i the priest of Literature and Philosophy, to interpret 
their mysteries to the common man; as a faithful preacher, 
teaching him to understand what is adapted for his 
understanding, to reverence what is adapted for higher 
understandings than his ? Or merely the lackey of 



170 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Dulness, striving for certain wages, of pudding or praise 
by the month or quarter, to perpetuate the reign of pre- 
sumption and triviaUty on eartli ? If the latter, will he 
not be counselled to pause for an instant, and reflect se- 
riously, whether starvation were worse or were better than 
such a dog's-existence ? — M. Novalis. 

THE CRITIC FLY. 
We are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right 
judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay essential, 
to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad. 
This maxim is so clear to ourselves, that, in respect to 
poetry at least, we almost think we could make it clearer 
to other men. In the first place, at all events, it is a 
much shallower and more ignoble occupation to detect 
faults than to discover beauties. The 'critic fly,' if it do 
but alight on any plinth or single cornice of a brave 
stately building, shall be able to declare, with its half- 
inch vision, that here is a speck, and there an inequality ; 
that, in fact, this and the other individual stone are nowise 
as they should be; for all this the 'critic fly 'will be suf- 
ficient : but to take in the fair relations of the Whole, to 
see the building as one object, to estimate its purpose, 
the adjustment of its parts, and their harmonious co- 
operation towards that purpose, will require the eye of a 
Vitruvius, or a Palladio. —M. Goethe. 

THE FA ULTS OF A WORK OF ART. 

The faults of a poem, or other piece of art as we view 
them at first, will by no means continue unaltered when 
we view them after due and final investigation. Let us 
consider what we mean by a fault By the word fault, 
we designate something that displeases us, that contra- 
dicts us. But here the question might arise : Who 
are we? This fault displeases, contradicts 11s ; so far 
is clear ; and had we, had /, and my pleasure and 
confirmation, been the chief end of the poet, then 
doubtless he has failed in that end, and his fault remains 



LfTERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. lyi 

a fault irremediably, and without defence. But who 
shall say whether such really was his object, whether 
such ought to have been his object? And if it was not, 
and ought not to have been, what becomes of the fault? 
It must hang altogether undecided; we as yet know 
nothing of it; perhaps it may not be the poets, but our 
own fault; perhaps it may be no fault whatever. To 
see rightly into this matter, to determine with any infal- 
libility, whether what we call a fault is in very deed a 
fault, we must previously have settled two points, nei- 
ther of which may be so readily settled. First, we must 
have made plain to ourselves what the poet's aim really 
and truly was, how the task he had to do stood before 
his own eye, and how far, with such means as it afforded 
him, he has fulfilled it. Secondly, we must have decid- 
ed whether and how far this aim, this task of his, ac- 
corded, — not with tis and our individual crotchets, and 
the crotchets of our little senate where we give and take 
the law, — but with human nature, and the nature of 
things at large; with the universal principles of poetic 
beauty, not as they stand written in our text-books, but 
in the hearts and imaginations of all men. Does the 
answer in either case come out unfavourable; was there 
an inconsistency between the means and the end, a dis- 
cordance between the end and truth, there is a fault: 
was there not, there is no fault. — M. Goethe. 

THE STUDY OF POETRY. 

We reckon it the falsest of all maxims that a true 
Poem can be adequately tasted ; can be judged of 'as 
men judge of a dinner,' by some internal tongue, that 
shall decide on the matter at once and irrevocably. Of 
the poetry which supplies spouting- clubs, and circulates 
in circulating libraries, we speak not here. That is 
quite another species ; which has circulated and will 
circulate, and ought to circulate, in all times ; but for 
the study of which no man is required to give rules, the 



1/2 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



rules being already given by the thing itself. We speak 
of that Poetry which Masters write, which aims not at 
'furnishing a languid mind with fantastic shows and in- 
dolent emotions,' but at incorporating the everlasting 
Reason of man in forms visible to his Sense, and suita- 
ble to it: and of this we say, that to know it is no 
slight task ; but rather that, being the essence of all sci- 
ence, it requires the purest of all study for knowing it. 
"What!" cries the reader, "are we to study Poetry? 
To pore over it as we do over Fluxions ?" Reader, it 
depends upon your object : if you want only amuse- 
ment, choose your book, and you get along, without 
study, excellently well. "But is not Shakspeare plain, 
visible to the very bottom, without study?" cries he. 
Alas, no, gentle Reader ; we cannot think so ; we do 
not find that he is visible to the very bottom even to 
those that profess the study of him. It has been our 
lot to read some criticisms on Shakspeare, and to hear 
a great many ; but for most part they amounted to no 
such 'visibility.' Volumes we have seen that were sim- 
ply one huge Interjection printed ov^er three hundred 
pages. Nine-tenths of our critics have told us little 
more of Shakspeare than what honest Franz Horn says 
our neighbours used to tell of him, 'that he was a great 
spirit, and stept majestically along.' —M. Goethe. 

JUDGMENT OF A FOREIGN WORK. 

In judging a foreign work, it is not enough to ask 
whether it is suitable to our modes, but whether it is 
suitable to foreign wants ; above all, whether it is suit- 
able to itself. The fairness, the necessity of this can 
need no demonstration ; yet how often do we find it, 
in practice, altogether neglected ! We could fancy we 
saw some Bond-street Tailor criticising the costume 
of an ancient Greek; censuring the highly improper cut 
of collar and lappel ; lamenting, indeed, that collar and 
lappel were nowhere to be seen. He pronounces the 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 173 

costume, easily and decisively, to be a barbarous one : 
to know whether it is a barbarous one, and how bar- 
barous, the judgment of a Winkelmann might be re- 
quired, and he would find it hard to give a judgment. 
For th^ questions set before the two were radically dif- 
ferent. The Fraction asked himself: How will this look 
in Almacks, and before Lord Mahogany ? The Win- 
kelmann asked himself: How will this look in the Uni- 
verse, and before the Creator of Man ? —M. Goethe. 

Let any man fancy the OEdiptis Tyranmis discovered 
for the first time ; translated from an unknown Greek 
manuscript, by some ready- writing manufacturer; and 
'brought out' at Drury Lane, with new music, made 
as 'apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring out of 
one vessel into another ' ! Then read the theatrical 
report in the Morning Papers, and the Magazines of 
next month. Was not the whole affair rather 'heavy ' ? 
How indifferent did the audience sit ; how little use was 
made of ^he handkerchief, except by such as took snuff! 
Did not CEdipus somewhat remind us of a blubbering 
school-boy, and Jocasta of a decayed milliner ? Confess 
that the plot was monstrous ; nay, considering the mar- 
riage-law of England, highly immoral. On the whole 
what a singular deficiency of taste must this Sophocles 
have laboured under ! But probably he was excluded 
from the 'society of the influential classes;' for, after 
all, the man is not without indications of genius : had 
ive the training of him — And so on, through all the va- 
riations of the critical cornpipe. 

So might it have fared with the ancient Grecian ; for 
so has it fared with the only modern * that writes in a 

Grecian spirit. — M. Goethe's Helena. 

SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.\ 

The grand question is not now a question concerning 
the qualities of diction, the coherence of metaphors, the 

•Goethe. This was written in 1828. t The Germsui School. Written in 1827. 



174 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



fitness of sentiments, the general logical truth, in a work 
of art, as it was some half century ago among most 
critics ; neither is it a question mainly of a psychological 
sort, to be answered by discovering and delineating 
the peculiar nature of the poet from his poetry : but it 
is, not indeed exclusively, but inclusively of those two 
other questions, properly and ultimately a question on the 
essence and peculiar life of the poetry itself The first 
of these questions, as we see it answered, for instance, 
in the criticism of Johnson and Kames, relates, strictly 
speaking, to the ^(^rw^-?// of poetry ; the second, indeed, 
to its body and material existence, a much higher point ; 
but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by 
which alone can the body, in its movements and 
phases, be informed with significance and rational life. 
The problem is not now to determine by what mechan- 
ism Addison composed sentences, and struck out simil- 
itudes ; but by what far finer and more mysterious 
mechanism Shakspeare organised his dramas, and gave 
life and individuality to his Ariel and hi^ Hamlet. 
Wherein lies that life ; how have they attained that shape 
and individuality ? Whence comes that empyrean fire, 
which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least 
in starry gleams, like a diviner thing, into all hearts ? 
Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true ; 
nay, truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmix- 
ed reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive 
symbols ? What is this unity of theirs ; and can our 
deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and exist- 
ing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, 
from the general elements of all Thought, and grows up 
therefrom, into form and expansion by its own growth ? 
Not only who was the poet, and how did he compose ; 
but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem 
and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured 
passion ? These are the questions for the critic. Crit- 
icism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. ijc 

the uninspired ; between the prophet and those who hear 
the melody of his words, and catch some ghmpse of 
their material meaning, but understand not their deeper 
import. She pretends to open for us this deeper import ; 
to clear our sense that it may discern the pure bright- 
ness of this eternal Beauty, and recognise it as heavenly, 
under all forms where it looks forth, and reject, as of the 
earth earthy, all forms, be their material splendour what 
it may, where no gleaming of that other shines through. 

— M. State of German Literature. 

DERIVA TION OF POETIC BRA UTY. 
Poetic beauty, in its pure essence, is not by this theory, 
as^ by all our theories, from Hume's to Alison's, derived 
from anything external, or of merely intellectual origin ; 
not from association, or any reflex or reminiscence of 
mere sensations ; nor from natural love, either of imita- 
tion, of similarity in dissimilarity, of excitement by con- 
trast, or of seeing difficulties overcome. On the contrary, 
it is assumed as underived ; not borrowing its existence 
from such sources, but as lending to most of these their 
significance and principal charm for the mind. It dwells 
and is born in the inmost Spirit of Man, united to all love 
of Virtue, to all true belief in God ; or, rather, it is one 
with this love and this belief, another phase of the same 
highest principle in the mysterious infinitude of the 
human Soul. To apprehend this beauty of poetry, in its 
full and purest brightness, is not easy but difficult; 
thousands on thousands eagerly read poems, and attain 
not the smallest taste of it ; yet to ail uncorrupted 
hearts, some effialgences of this heavenly glory are here 
and there revealed ; and to apprehend it clearly and 
wholly, to acquire and maintain a sense and heart that 
sees and worships it, is the last perfection of all humane 
culture. With mere readers for amusement, therefore, 
this Criticism has, and can have, nothing to do ; these 
find their amusement, in less or greater measure, and 
the nature of Poetry remains forever hidden from them 



176 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



in deepest concealment. On all hands, there is no trace 
given to the hypothesis, that the ultimate object of the 
poet is to please. Sensation, ever of the finest and most 
rapturous sort, is not the end but the means. Art is to 
be loved, not because of its effects, but because of itself ; 
not because it is useful for spiritual pleasure, or even for 
moral culture, but because it is Art, and the highest in 
man, and the soul of all Beauty. To inquire after its 
titility, would be like inquiring after the utility of a 
God, or, what to the Germans would sound stranger 
than it does to us, the titility of Virtue and Religion. 

— M. State of German Literature. 

AFFECT A TION IN LITER A TURE—B YRON. 
This [Sincerity] is the grand secret for finding readers 
and retaining them : let him who would move and con- 
vince others be first moved and convinced himself 
Horace's rule. Si vis me flere, is applicable in a wider 
sense than the literal one. To every poet, to every 
writer, we might say : Be true, if you would be be- 
lieved. * * * 

This may appear a very simple principle ; * * but 
the practical appliance is not easy ; is indeed the fun- 
damental difficulty which all poets have to strive with, 
and which scarcely one in the hundred ever fairly sur- 
mounts. A head too dull to discriminate the true from 
the false ; a heart too dull to love the one at all risks, 
and to hate the other in spite of all temptations, are alike 
fatal to a writer. With either, or, as more commonly 
happens, with both, of these deficiences, combine a love 
of distinction, a wish to be original, which is seldom 
wanting, and we have Affectation, the bane of literature, 
as Cant, its elder brother, is of morals. How often does 
the one and the other front us, in poetry, as in life ! 
Great poets themselves are not always free of this 
vice ; nay, it is precisely on a certain sort and degree of 
greatness that it is most commonly ingrafted. A strong 
effort "after excellence will sometimes solace itself with a 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 177 

mere shadow of success ; he who has much to unfold, 
will sometimes unfold it imperfectly. Byron, for in- 
stance, was no common man : yet if we examine his 
poetry with this view, we shall find it far enough from 
faultless. Generally speaking, we should say that it is 
not true. He refreshes us, not with the divine fountain, 
but too often with vulgar strong waters, stimulating in- 
deed to the taste, but soon ending in dislike, or even 
nausea Are his Harolds and Giaours, we would ask, 
real men ; we mean, poetically consistent and conceiv- 
able men ? Do not these characters, does not the char- 
acter of their author, which more or less shines through 
them all, rather appear a thing put on for the occasion ; 
no natural or possible mode of being, but something m- 
tended to look much grander than nature ? Surely, all 
these stormful agonies, this volcanic heroism, superhu- 
man contempt and moody desperation, with so much 
scowling, and teeth-gnashing, and other sulphurous 
humour, is more like the brawling of a player in some 
paltry tragedy, which is to last three hours, than the 
bearing of a man in the business of life, which is to last 
threescore and ten years. To our minds, there is a 
taint of this sort, something which we should call theat- 
rical, false, affected, in every one of these so powerful 
pieces. Perhaps Don Juan, especially the latter, parts 
of it, is the only thing approaching to a sincere work, 
he ever wrote ; the only work where he showed him- 
self: in any measure, as he was ; and seemed so intent 
on his subject as, for moments, to forget himself \ et 
Byron hated this vice ; we believe, heartily detested it : 
nay he had declared formal war against it in words. 
So difficult is it even for the strongest to make this pri- 
mary attainment, which might seem the simplest of all : 
to read its own consciousness without mistakes, without 
errors involuntary or wilful ! * * * No man, it would 
appear is altogether unaffected. Does not Shakspeare 
himself sometimes premeditate the sheerest bombast I 

—M. Bunts. 



178 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



WITA T IS AFFECTA TION ? 
The essence of affectation is that it be assumed: the 
character is, as it were, forcibly crushed into some for- 
eign mould, in the hope of being thereby reshaped and 
beautified ; the unhappy man persuades himself that he 
has in truth become a new creature, of the wonderful- 
lest symmetry ; and so he moves about with a conscious 
air, though every movement betrays not symmetry but 
dislocation. This it is to be affected, to walk in a vain 
show. But the strangeness alone is no proof of the 
vanity. Many men that move smoothly in the old es- 
tablished railways of custom will be found to have their 
affectation ; and perhaps here and there some divergent 
genms be accused of it unjustly. The shozv, though 
common, may not cease to be vain; nor become so 
from being uncommon. Before we censure a man for 
seeming what he is not, we should be sure that we know 

what he is. —M. Rkhter. 

SINGULARITY. 
The great law of culture is : Let each become all that 
he was created capable of being ; expand, if possible, to 
his full growth ; resisting all impediments, casting off all 
foreign, especially all noxious adhesions ; , and show 
himself at length in his own shape and stature, be these 
what ■ they may. There is no uniform of excellence, 
either in physical or spiritual Nature: all g'enuine things 
are what they ought to be. The reindeer is good and 
beautiful, so likewise is the elephant. In Literature it 
is the same: 'Every man,' says Lessing, 'has his own 
style, like his own nose.' True, there are noses of 
wonderful dimensions ; but no nose can justly be am- 
putated by the public, — not even the nose of Slawken- 
bergius himself; so it l?e a real nose, and no wooden 
one, put on for deception's sake and mere show ! — M. 

Richter. 

THE BE A TEN FA THS. 

The beaten paths of Literature lead the safeliest to the 
goal ; and the talent pleases us most which submits to 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



179 



shine with new gracefulness through old forms. Nor is 
the noblest and most peculiar mind too noble or peculiar 
for working by prescribed laws : Sophocles, Shakspeare, 
Cervantes, Goethe, how little did they innovate on the 
given forms of composition, how much in the spirit 
they breathed into them ! —M. Rkhter. 

FAME, TRUE AND FALSE. 

Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but 
only a probability of such : it is an accident, not a prop- 
erty, of a man ; like light, it can give little or nothing, 
but at most may show what is given ; often it is but a 
false glare, dazzling the eyes of the vulgar, lending by 
casual extrinsic splendour the brightness and manifold 
glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value. A man 
is in all cases simply tJie man, of the same intrinsic worth 
and weakness, whether his worth and weakness lie hid- 
den in the depths of his own consciousness, or bebetrump- 
eted and beshouted from end to end of the habitable 

globe. — M. Goethe. 

As his fame waxes not by exaggerated clamour of 
what \\Q seems to be, but by better and better insight of 
what he is, so it will last and stand wearing, being genu- 
ine. Thus indeed is it always, or nearly always, with true 
fame. The heavenly Luminary rises amid vapours : 
stargazers enough must scan it, with critical telescopes ; 
it makes no blazing, the world can either look at it, or 
forbear looking at it ; not till after a time and times, 
does its celestial eternal nature become indubitable. 
Pleasant, on the other hand, is the blazing of a Tar- 
barrel ; the crowd dance merrily round it, with" loud 
huzzaing, universal three-times-three, and, like Homer's 
peasants, ' bless the useful light : ' but unhappily it so 
soon ends in darkness, foul choking smoke ; and is 
kicked into the fetters, a nameless imbroglio of charred 

staves, pitch-cinders and voinisscinent du diablc J 
—M. Bosioell. 



l8o THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



AN EXAMPLE. 



See, on the very boundary line of Parnassus, rises a 
ga:llows with the figure of a man hung in chains ! It is 
the figure of August von Kotzebue ; and has swung 
there for many years, as a warning to all too-audacious 
Playwrights ; who nevertheless, as we see, pay little 
heed to it. Ill fated Kotzebue, once the darling of 
theatrical Europe ! This was the Prince of all Play- 
wrights, and could manufacture Plays with a speed and 
felicity surpassing even Edinburgh Novels. For his 
•muse, like other doves, hatched twins in a month ; and 
the world gazed on them with an admiration too deep 
for mere words. What is all past or present popularity 
to this ? Were not these Plays translated into almost 
every language of articulate speaking men ; acted, at 
least, we may literally say, in every theatre from Kamt- 
schatka to Cadiz ? Nay, did they not melt the most 
obdurate hearts in all countries ; and, like the music of 
Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks ? We ourselves 
have known the flintiest men, who professed to have 
wept over them, for the first time in their lives. So 
was it twenty years ago; how stands it to-day [1829]. 
Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balloon of popular 
applause, thought wings had been given him that he 
might ascend to the Immortals : gay he rose, soaring, 
sailing, as with supreme dominion ; but in the rarer 
azure deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows of 
keen archers pierced it ; and so at last we find him a 
compound-pendulum, vibrating in the character of 
scarecrow, to guard from forbidden fruit ! O ye Play- 
wrights, and literary quacks of every feather, weep over 
Kotzebue, and yourselves ! Know that the loudest roar 
of the million is not fame ; that the windbag, are ye 
mad enough to mount it, will burst, or be shot through 
with arrows, and your bones -too shall act as scarecrows. 
— M. German Playwrights. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. igi 

THE LOVE OF FAME. 
Most authors speak of their 'Fame' as if it were a quite 
priceless matter ; the grand uhimatum, and heavenly 
Constantine's-Banner they had to follow, and conquer 
under. — Thy * Fame ' ! Unhappy mortal, where will it 
and thou be in some fifty years ? Shakspeare himself 
has lasted but two hundred ; Homer (partly by acci- 
dent) three thousand: and does not already an ETER- 
NITY encircle every Me and every Thee? Cease, then, to 
sit feverishly hatching on that ' Fame' of thine ; and flap- 
ping, and shrieking with fierce hisses, like brood-goose 
on her last ^^^, if man shall or dare approach it ! 
Quarrel not with me, hate me not, my Brother : make 
what thou canst of thy o.^^, and welcome : God knows, 
I will not steal it ; I believe it to be addle. —M. Boswell. 

THE VANITY OF FAME. 

The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies silent 
under my feet in this world, and escorts and attends me, 
and supports and keeps me alive, wheresoev.er I walk 
or stand, whatsoever I think or do, gives rise to reflec- 
tions ! Is it not enough, at any rate, to strike the thing 
called 'Fame' into total silence for a wise man'' For 
fools and unreflective persons, she is and will be very 
noisy, this 'Fame,' and talks of her 'immortals' and so 
forth : but if you will consider it, what is she ? Her 
'immortals'! Scarcely two hundred years back can 
Fame recollect articulately at all ; and then she but 
maunders, and mumbles. She manages to recollect a 
Shakspeare or so ; and prates, considerably like a goose 
about him ; and in the rear of that, onwards to the 
birth of Theath, to Hengst's Invasion, and the bosom 
of Eternity, it was all a blank ; and the respectable Teu- 
tonic Languages, Teutonic Practices, Existences, all 
came of their own accord, as grass springs, as trees 
grow ; no Poet, no work from the inspired heart of a 
Man needed there; and Fame has not an articulate word 



J 82 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

to say about it ! Or ask her, What, with all conceivable 
appliances and mnemonics, including apotheosis and hu- 
man sacrifices among the number, she carries in her head 
with regard to a Wodan, even a Moses, or other such ? 
She begins to be uncertain as to what they were, 
whether spirits or men of mould, — gods, charlatans ; be- 
gins sometimes to have a misgiving that they were mere 
symbols, ideas of the mind ; perhaps nonentities, and 
Letters of the Alphabet ! She is the noisiest, inarticu- 
lately babbling, hissing, screaming, foolishest, unmusic- 
alest of fowls that fly; and needs no 'trumpet,' I think, 
but her own enormous goose-throat, — measuring sever- 
al degrees of celestial latitude, so to speak. Her ' wings,' 
in these days, have grown far swifter than ever; but 
her goose-throat hitherto seems only larger, louder and 
foolisher than ever. She is transitory, futile, a goose- 
goddess : if she were not transitory, what would become 
of us 1 It is a chief comfort that she forgets us all ; all 
even to the very Wodans ; and grows to consider us, at 
last, as probably nonentities and Letters of the Alpha- 
bet. 

My friend, all speech and rumour is short-lived, fool- 
ish, untrue. Genuine WORK alone, what thou workest 
faithfully, that is eternal, as the Almighty Founder and 
World-Builder himself Stand thou by that; and let 
'Fame' and the rest of it go prating. 

' Heard are the Voices, 

Heard are the Sages, 

The Worlds and the Ages : 
'Choose well, your choice is 

Brief and yet endless. 

Here eyes do regard you, • 

In Eternity's stillness ; 

Here is^ill fulness, 

Ye brave, to reward you ; 

Work, and despair not.' ' * — P. 6^ P. II. 17. " 

* Goethe. Caryle's translation. "" 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. ig^ 

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. 
It is not speaking with exaggeration, but with strict 
measured sobriety, to say that this Book of Boswcll's will 
give us more real insight into the History of England 
during those days than twenty other Books, falsely en- 
titled 'Histories,' which take to themselves that special 
aim. What good is it to me though innumerable Smol- 
letts and Belshams keep dinning in my ears that a man 
named George the Third was born and bred up, and a 
man named George the Second died ; that Walpole, 
and the Pelhams, and Chatham, and Rockingham, and 
Shelburne, and North, with their Coalition or their Sep- 
aration Ministries, all ousted one another; and vehe- 
mently scrambled for 'the thing they called the Rudder 
of Government, but which was in reality the Spigot of 
Taxation ?' That debates were held, and infinite jarring 
and jargoning took place ; and road-bills and enclosure- 
bills, and game-bills, and India-bills, and Laws which 
no- man can number, which happily few men needed to 
trouble their heads with beyond the passing moment, 
were enacted, and printed by the King's Stationer? 
That he who sat in Chancery and rayed out speculation 
from the Woolsack was now a man that squinted, now 
a man that did not squint ? To the hungry and thirsty 
mind all this avails next to nothing. These men and 
these things, we indeed know, did swim, by strength or 
by specific levity, as apples or as horse-dung, on the top 
of the current : but is it by painfully noting the courees, 
eddyings and bobbings hither and thither of such drift- 
articles, that you will unfold to me the nature of the 
current itself; of that mighty-rolling, loud-roaring Life- 
current, bottomless as the foundations of the Universe 
mysterious as its Author ? The thing I want to see is 
not Redbook Lists, and Court Calendars, and Parliament- 
ary Registers, but the LlEE OF Man in England : 
what men did, thought, suffered, enjoyed ; the form, es- 
pecially the spirit, of their terrestrial existence, its out 



1 84 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

ward environment, its inward principle ; how and what 
it was ; whence it proceeded, whither it was tending. 

—M. Boswell. 

HOW HISTORY IS WRITTEN. 
Mournful in truth, is it tc behold what the business 
called 'History,' in these so enlightened and illuminated 
times, still continues to be.* Can you gather from it, 
read till your eyes go out, any dimmest shadow of an 
answer to that great question : How men lived and 
had their being ; were but it economically, as what wages 
they got, and what they bought with these ? Unhap- 
pily you cannot. History will throw no light on any 
such matter. At the point where living memory fails, 
it is all darkness ; Mr. Senior and Mr. Sadler must still 
debate this simplest of all elements in the condition of 
the Past: whether men were better off, in their mere 
larders and pantries, or were worse off than now ! His- 
tory, as it stands all bound up in gilt volumes, is but a 
shade more instructive than the wooden-volumes of a 
Backgammon-board. How my Prime Minister was ap- 
pointed is of less moment to me than how my House 
Servant was hired. In these days, ten ordinary Histo- 
ries of Kings and Courtiers were well exchanged against 
the tenth part of one good History of Booksellers. For 
example, I would fain know the History of Scotland : 
who can tell it me? "Robertson," say innumerable 
voices; "Robertson against the world." I open Rob- 
ertson ; and find there, through long ages too confused 
for narrative, and fit only to be presented in the way ol 
epitome and distilled essence, a cunning answer and hy- 
pothesis, not to this question : By whom, and by whal 
means, when and how, was this fair broad Scotland, 
with its Arts and Manufactures, Temples, Schools, Insti- 
tutions, Poetry, Spirit, National Character, created, and 
made arable, verdant, peculiar, great, here as I can see 
some fair section of it lying, kind and strong (like some 

* Written in 1832. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 185 

Bacchus-tamed Lion,) from the Castle-hill of Edinburgh ? 
— but to this other question : How did the King keep 
himself alive in those old days ; and restrain so many 
Butcher-Barons and ravenous Henchmen from utterly 
extirpating one another, so that killing went on in some 
sort of moderation ? In the one little Letter of -^neas 
Sylvius, from old Scotland, there is more of History than 
in all this. — At length, however, we come to a lumin- 
ous age, interesting enough; to the age of the Reforma- 
tion. All Scotland is awakened to a second higher life : 
the Spirit of the Highest stirs in every bosom, agitates 
every bosom ; Scotland is convulsed, fermenting, strug- 
gling to body itself forth anew. To the herdsman, 
among his cattle in remote woods ; to the craftsman, in 
his rude, heath-thatched workshop, among his rude 
guild-brethren ; to the great and to the little, a new 
light has arisen : in town and hamlet groups are gath- 
ered, with eloquent looks, and governed or ungoverna- 
ble tongues ; the great and the little go forth together 
to do battle for the Lord against the mighty. We ask, 
with breathless eagerness : How was it ; how went it 
on ? Let us understand it, let us see it and know it ! — 
In reply, is handed us a really graceful and most dainty 
little Scandalous Chronicle (as for some Journal of 
Fashion) of two persons : Mary Stuart, a Beauty, but 
over lightheaded ; and Henry Darnley, a Booby who 
had fine legs. How these first courted, billed and 
cooed, according to nature ; then pouted, fretted, grew 
utterly enraged, and blew one another up with gunpow- 
der : this, and not the history of Scotland, is what we 
goodnaturedly read. Nay, by other hands, something 
like a horse-load of other Books have been written to 
prove that it was the Beauty who blew up the Booby, 
and that it was not she. Who or what it was, the thing 
once for all being so effectually done, concerns us little. 
To know Scotland, at that great epoch, were a valuable 
increase of knowledge : to know poor Darnley, and see 



I 86 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

him with burning candle, from centre to skin, were no 
increase of knowledge at all. — Thus is History written. 
Hence, indeed, comes it that History, which should be 
'the essence of innumerable Biographies,' will tell us, 
question it as we like, less than one genuine Biography 
may do, pleasantly and of its own accord ! The time 
is approaching when History will be attempted on quite 
other principles ; when the Court, the Senate, and the 
Battle-field, receding more and more into the back- 
ground, the Temple, the Workshop and Social Hearth 
will advance more and more into the foreground ; and 
History will not content itself with shaping some an- 
swer to that question : How were men taxed and kept 
quiet then ? but will seek to answer this other infinitely 
wider and higher question : How and what zvere men 
then? Not our Government only, or the 'House 
wherein our life was led,' but the Life itself we led there 
will be inquired into. —M. Boszvell. 

DIGNITY OF HISTORY. 

'Of all blinds that shut-up men's vision,' says one, 'the 
worst is Self How true! How doubly true, if Self, 
assuming her cunningest, yet miserablest disguise, come 
on us, in never-ceasing, all-obscuring reflexes from the 
innumerable Selves of others ; not as Pride, not even as 
real Hunger, but only as Vanity, and the shadow of an 
imaginary Hunger for Applause ; under the name of 
what we call 'Respectability !' Alas now for our His- 
torian : to his other spiritual deadness (which however, 
so long as he physically breathes, cannot be considered 
complete) this sad new magic influence is added ! 
Henceforth his Histories must be all screwed up into 
the 'dignity of History.' Instead of looking fixedly at 
the Tiling, and first of all, and beyond all, endeavour- 
ing to see it, and fashion a living Picture of it, not a 
wretched politico-metaphysical Abstraction of it, he has 
now quite other matters to look to. The Thing lies 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. jgj 

shrouded, invisible, in thousandfold hallucinations, and 
foreign air-images : What did the Whigs say of it ? 
What did the Tories? The Priests ? The Freethink- 
ers ? Above all, what will my own listening circle say 
of me for what I say of it ? And then his Respectability 
in general, as a literary gentleman ; his not despicable 
talent for philosophy ! Thus is our poor Historian's 
faculty directed mainly on two objects : the Writing and 
the Writer, both of which are quite extraneous ; and 
the Thing written-of fares as we see. Can it be won- 
derful that Histories, wherein open lying is not permit- 
ted, are unromantic ? Nay, our very Biographies, how 
stiff-starched, foisonless, hollow ? They stand there re- 
spectable ; and — what more? Dumb idols; with a 
skin of delusively painted wax-work ; inwardly empty, 
or full of rags and bran. In our England especially, 
which in these days is become the chosen land of Re- 
spectability, Life-writing has dwindled to the sorrowful- 
lest condition ; it requires a man to be some disrespect- 
able, ridiculous Boswell before he can write a tolerable 
Life. Thus, too, strangely enough, the only Lives 
worth reading are those of Players, emptiest and poor- 
est of the sons of Adam ; who nevertheless were sons of 
his, and brothers of ours ; and by the nature of the case, 
had already bidden Respectability good-day. Such 
bounties, in this as in infinitely deeper matters, does 
Respectability shower down on us. Sad are thy doings, 
O Gig ; sadder than those of Juggernaut's Car : that, 
with huge wheel, suddenly crushes asunder the bodies 
of men ; thou in thy light-bobbing Long-Acre springs, 
gradually winnowest away their souls! —The Bunnotid 

Necklace. 

WHAT A BIOGRAPHY SHOULD BE. 
Our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear ex- 
travagant; but if an individual is really of conse- 
quence enough to have his life and character recorded 
for public remembrance, we have always been of opin- 



I 88 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

ion, that the public ought to be made acquainted with 
all the inward springs and relations of his character. 
How did the world and man's life, from his particular 
position, represent themselves to his mind ? How did 
co-existing circumstances modify him from without ; how 
did he modify these from within ? With what endeav- 
ours and what efficacy rule over them ; with what re- 
sistance and what suffering sink under them ? In one 
word, what and how produced was the effect of society on 
him; what and how produced was his effect on society ? 
He who should answer these questions, in regard to any 
individual, would, as we believe, furnish a model of 
perfection in Biography. —M. Bums. 

HUMOUR AND SENSIBILITY. 

It has sometimes been made a wonder that things so dis- 
cordant should go together; that men of humour are 
often likewise men of sensibility. But the wonder should 
rather be to see them divided ; to find true genial hu- 
mour dwelling in a mind that was coarse or callous. 
The essence of humour is sensibility ; warm, tender fel- 
low feeling with all forms of existence. Nay, we may 
say that unless seasoned and purified by humour, sen- 
sibility is apt to run wild ; will readily corrupt into dis- 
ease, falsehood-, or, in one word, sentimentality. Witness 
Rousseau, Zimmerman, in some points also St. Pierre : 
to say nothing of living instances; or of the Kotzebues, 
and other pale host of woe-begone mourners, whose 
wailings, like the howl of an Irish wake, have from time 
to time cleft the general ear. *The last perfection of 
our faculties,' says Schiller with a truth far deeper than 
it seems, 'is that their activity, without ceasing to be 
sure and earnest, become sport.' True humour is sen- 
sibility, in the most catholic and deepest sense ; but it 
is this sport of sensibility ; wholesome and perfect there- 
fore ; as it were, the playful teasing fondness of a mother 

to her child. —M. Rkhter. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 189 

TRUE HUMOUR. 

That faculty of irony, of caricature, which often passes 
by the name of humour, but consists chiefly in a cer- 
tain superficial distortion or reversal of objects, and ends 
at best in laughter, * * [is] a shallow endowment ; and 
often more a habit than an endowment. It is but a 
poor fraction of humour ; or rather, it is the body to 
which the soul is wanting ; any life it has being false, 
artificial and irrational. True humour springs not more 
from the head than from the heart ; it is not contempt, 
its essence is love ; it issues not in laughter, but in still 
smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sub- 
limity ; exalting, as it were, into our affections what is 
below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections 
what is above us. The former is scarcely less precious 
or heart-affecting than the latter; perhaps it is still 
rarer, and, as a test of genius, still more decisive. It is, 
in fact, the bloom and perfume, the purest effluence of 
a deep, fine and loving nature ; a nature in harmony 
with itself, reconciled to the world and its stintedness 
and contradiction, nay finding in this very contradiction 
new elements of beauty as well as goodness. —M. RUhter. 

THE HUMOURISTS. 

Among our own writers, Shakspeare, in this as in all 
other provinces, must have his place : yet not the first ; 
his humour is heartfelt, exuberant, warm, but seldom 
the tenderest or most subtle. Swift inclines more to 
simple irony ; yet he had genuine humour too, and of 
no unloving sort, though cased, like Ben Jonson's, in 
a most bitter and caustic rind. Sterne follows next ; 
our last specimen of humour, and, with all his faults, 
our best ; our finest, if not our strongest ; for Yorick and 
Corporal Trim and Uncle Toby have yet no brother 
but in Don Quixote, far as he lies above them. Cervan- 
tes is indeed the purest of all humourists ; so gentle and 
genial, so full, yet so ethereal is his humour, and in such 



190 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



accordance with itself and his whole noble nature. 
The Italian mind is said to abound in humour; yet 
their classics seem to give us no right emblem of it : 
except perhaps in Ariosto, there appears little in their 
current poetry that reaches the region of true humour. 
In France, since the days of Montaigne, it seems to be 
nearly extinct. Voltaire, much as he dealt in ridicule, 
never rises into humour ; even with Moleire, it is far 
more an affair of the understanding than of the charac- 
ter. — M. Richter. 

A TALENT FOR DESCRIPTION. 
Clearness of sight we have called the foundation of 
all talent ; for in fact, unless we see our object, how 
shall we know how to place or prize it, in our under- 
standing, our imagination, our affections ? Yet it is not 
in itself, perhaps, a very high excellence ; but capable 
of being united indifferently with the strongest, or with 
ordinary powers. Homer surpasses all men in this 
quality : but strangely enough, at no great distance be- 
low him are Richardson and Defoe. It belongs, in 
truth, to what is called a lively mind ; and gives no sure 
indication of the higher endowments that may exist 
along with it. In all the three cases we have mentioned, 
it is combined with great garrulity ; their descriptions 
are detailed, ample and lovingly exact ; Homer's fire 
bursts through, from time to time, as if by accident; 
but Defoe and Richardson have no fire. — M. Bums. 

VIEW-HUNTING. 
Some time before Small-Pox was extirpated, says the 
Professor, there came a new malady of the spiritual sort 
on Europe : I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of 
View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with 
Senses, had also enjoyed external Nature ; but chiefly 
as we enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad 
liquor for us ; that is to say, in silence, or with slight 
incidental commentary : never, as I compute, till after 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. jgi 

the Sorrows of Werter, was there man found who 
would say : Come let us make a description ! Having 
drunk the liquor, come let us eat the glass ! Of which 
endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek. 
—S. R. II. 6. 

NOVEL WRITING. 

Of no given Book, not even of a Fashionable Novel, 
can you predicate with certainty that its vacuity is ab- 
solute ; that there are not other vacuities which shall 
partially replenish themselves therefrom, and esteem it 
a plenum. How knowest thou, may the distressed 
Novelwright exclaim, that I, here where I sit, am the 
Foolishest of existing mortals ; that this my Long-ear 
of a Fictitious Biography shall not find one and the 
other, into whose still longer ears it may be the means, 
under Providence, of instilling somewhat? We answer, 
None knows, none can certainly know : therefore, write 
on, worthy Brother, even as thou canst, even as it has 
been given thee. —M. Biography. 

THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 
Looking back with a farewell glance, over that won- 
drous old Tale, with its many-coloured texture of 'joy- 
ances and high-tides, of weeping and of woe,' so 
skilfully yet artlessly knit up into a whole, we cannot 
but repeat that a true epic spirit lies in it ; that in many 
ways it has meaning and charms for us. Not only as 
the oldest Tradition of Modern Europe, does it possess 
a high antiquarian interest ; but farther, and even in the 
shape we now see it under, unless the ' Epics of the Son 
of Fingal ' had some sort of authenticity, it is our oldest 
Poem also ; the earliest product of these New Ages, 
V/'hich on its own merits, both in form and essence, can 
be named Poetical. Considering its chivalrous, romantic 
tone, it may rank as a piece of literary composition, 
perhaps considerably higher than the Spanish Cid ; 
taking in its historical significance, and deep ramifica- 
tions into the remote Time, it ranks indubitably and 
greatly higher. 



192 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



It has been called a Northern Iliad ; but except in 
the fact that both poems have a narrative character, and 
both sing 'the destructive rage' of men, the two have 
scarcely any similarity. The Singer of the Nibehingen 
is a far different person from Homer ; far inferior both 
in culture and in genius. Nothing of the glowing 
imagery, of the fierce bursting energy, of the mingled 
fire and gloom, that dwell in the old Greek, makes its 
appearance here. The German Singer is comparatively 
a simple nature; has never penetrated deep into life; 
never 'questioned Fate;' or struggled with fearful 
mysteries ; of all which we find traces in Homer, still 
more in Shakspeare ; but with meek believing submis- 
sion, has taken the Universe as he found it represented 
to him ; and rejoices with a fine childlike gladness in 
the mere outward shows of things. He has little power 
of delineating character ; perhaps he had no decisive 
vision thereof. His persons are superficially distin- 
guished, and not altogether without generic difference ; 
but the portraiture is imperfectly brought out ; there 
lay no true living original within him. He has little 
Fancy ; we find scarcely one or two similitudes in his 
whole Poem ; and these one or two, which moreover 
are repeated, betoken no special faculty that way. He 
speaks of the ' moon among stars ; ' days often, of sparks 
struck from steel armour in battle, and so forth, that 
they were wie es zvcJite der ivhid, 'as if the wind were 
blowing them.' We have mentioned Tasso along with 
him ; yet neither in this case is there any close re- 
semblance ; the light playful grace, still more the Italian 
pomp and sunny luxuriance of Tasso are wanting in 
the other. His are humble wood-notes wild ; no night- 
ingale's, but yet a sweet sky-hidden lark's. In all the 
rhetorical gifts, to say nothing of rhetorical attainments, 
we should pronounce him even poor. 

Nevertlieless, a noble soul he must have been, and 
furnished with far more essential requisites for Poetry 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. ig^ 

than these are ; namely, with the heart and feeling of a 
Poet. He has a clear eye for the Beautiful and True ; 
all unites itself gracefully and compactly in his imagina- 
tion : it is strange with what careless felicity he winds 
his way in that complex Narrative, and be the subject 
what it will, comes through it unsullied, and with a 
smile. His great strength is an unconscious instinctive 
strength ; wherein truly lies his highest merit. The 
whole spirit of Chivalry, of Love, and heroic Valour, 
must have lived in him, and inspired him. Everywhere 
he shows a noble Sensibility ; the sad accents of parting 
friends, the lamentings of women, the high daring of 
men, all that is worthy and lovely prolongs itself in 
melodious echoes through the heart. A true old Singer, 
and taught of Nature herself! Neither let us call him 
an inglorious Milton, since now he is no longer a 
mute one. What good were it that the four or five 
Letters composing his Name could be printed, and pro- 
nounced, with absolute certainty ? AH that was mortal 
in him is gone utterly ; if his life, and its environment, 
as of the bodily tabernacle he dwelt in, the very ashes 
remain not : hke a fair heavenly Apparition, which in- 
deed he was, he has melted into air, and only the 
Voice he uttered, in virtue of its inspired gift, yet lives 
and will live. —M. The Nibehmgen Lied. 

THE KORAN. 

It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, 
especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet dic- 
tated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name 
Koran, or Reading, 'Thing to be read.' This is the 
Work he and his disciples make so much of, asking all 
the world, Is not that a miracle? The Mahometans 
regard their Koran with a reverence which few Chris- 
tians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted everywhere 
as the standard of all law and all practice ; the thing to be 
gone- upon in speculation and life; the message sent di- 
13 



194 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



rect out of Heaven, which this Earth has to comform to, 
and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges decide 
by it; all Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for 
the light of their life. They have mosques where it is 
all read daily ; thirty relays of priests take it up in suc- 
cession, get through the whole each day. There, for 
twelve-hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all 
moments, kept sounding through the ears and the 
hearts of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doc- 
tors that have read it seventy-thousand times? 

Very curious: if one sought for 'discrepancies of na- 
tional taste,' here surely were the most eminent instance 
of that! We also can read the Koran; our Translation 
of it, by Sale is known to be a very fair one. I must 
say, it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A 
wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; endless 
iterations, longwindedness, entanglement ; most crude, 
incondite; — insupportable stupidity, in short! Nothing 
but a sense of duty could carry any European through 
the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State- 
Paper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps 
we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. It is 
true we have it under disadvantages: the Arabs see 
more method in it than we. Mahomet's followers found 
the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written- 
down at first promulgation; much of it, they say, on 
shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pellmell into a chest: 
and they published it, without any discoverable order 
as to time or otherwise ; — merely trying, as would seem, 
and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters 
first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost 
at the end: for the earliest portions were the shortest. 
Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be 
so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic: a kind 
of wild chanting song, in the original. This may be a 
great point ; much perhaps has been lost in the Trans- 
lation here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it diffi- 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. ig^ 

cult to see how any mortal ever could consider this 
Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the 
Earth; as a well- written book, or indeed as a dook at 
all ; and not a bewildered rhapsody ; wi'itten, as far 
as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was! 
So much for national discrepancies, and the standard of 
taste. —H.ii. 

THE BOOK OF JOB. 

They had many Prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each 
to his tribe, each according to the light he had. But in- 
deed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, 
still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness 
and noblemindedness had dwelt in these rustic thought- 
ful peoples? Biblical critics seem agreed that our own 
Book of Job was written in that region of the world. I 
call that, apart from all theories about it, one of the 
grandest things ever written with pen. One feels, in- 
deed, as if it were not Hebrew; such a noble universal- 
ity, different from noble patriotism or sectarianism, 
reigns in it. A noble Book; all men's Book! It is our 
first, oldest statement of the never-ending Problem, — 
man's destiny and God's ways with him here in this 
earth. And all in such free flowing outlines ; grand in 
its sincerity, in its simplicity; in its epic melody, and 
repose of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the 
mildly understanding heart. So true everyway; true 
eyesight and vision for all things ; material things no 
less than spiritual: the Horse, — 'hast thou clothed his 
neck with thunder?' — he 'laughs at the shaking of the 
spear!' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. 
Sublime sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral 
melody as of the heart of mankind; — so soft, and great; 
as the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and 
stars. There is nothing written, I think, in the Bible or 
out of it, of equal literary merit. —H II. 



190 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



THE DIVINE COMEDY. 

I '1^0 not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly 
pre/erring the Inferno to the two other parts of the 
Divine Commedia. Such preference belongs, I imagine, 
to our general Byronism of taste, and is hke to be a 
transient feeHng. The Piirgatorio and Paradise, espe- 
cially the former, one would almost say, is even more 
excellent than it. It is a noble thing that Purgatorio, 
'Mountain of Purification;' an emblem of the noblest 
conception of that age. If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and 
must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is man 
purified; Repentance is the grand Christian act. It is 
beautiful how Dante works it out. The tremolar dell' 
onde, that 'trembling' of the ocean waves, under the first 
pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering 
Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now 
dawned: never-dying Hope, if in company still with 
heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of daemons and 
reprobate is underfoot; a soft breathing of penitence 
mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy it- 
self "Pray for me," the denizens of that Mount of 
Pain all say to him. "Tell my Giovanna to pray for 
me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her mother loves 
me no more!" They toil painfully up by that winding 
step, 'bent down like corbels of a building,' some of 
them, — crushed-together so ' for the sin of pride ; ' yet 
nevertheless in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have 
reached the top, which is Heaven's gate, and by Mercy 
shall have been admitted in. The joy too of all, when 
one has prevailed; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, 
and a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected 
repentance and got its sin and misery left behind! I 
call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. 
But indeed the Three compartments mutually support 
one another, are indispensable to one another. The 
Paradiso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the 
redeeming side of the Inferno ; the Inferno without it 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



197 



were untrue. All three make-up the true Unseen 
World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages; 
a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence 
of it, to all men. It was perhaps delineated in no 
human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of 
Dante's; a man sent to sing it, to keep it long memora- 
ble. Very notable with what brief simplicity he passes 
out of the every-day reality, into the Invisible one; 
and in the second or third stanza, we find ourselves in 
the World of Spirits; and dwell there, as among 
things palpable, indubitable! To Dante they were so; 
the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the 
threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. At 
bottom, the one was as /r^-Z^rnatural as the other. Has 
not each man a soul? He will not only be a spirit, but is 
one. To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he 
believes it, sees it; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sin- 
cerity, I say again, is the saving merit, now as always. 
—H. III. 

B URNS' S FOE TR Y. 
Independently of the essential gift of poetic feeling, a 
certain rugged sterling worth pervades whatever Burns 
has written: a virtue, as of green fields and mountain 
breezes, dwells in his poetry; it is redolent of natural 
life and hardy natural men. There is a decisive strength 
in him, and yet a sweet native gracefulness: he is 
tender, he is vehement, yet without constraint or too 
visible effort: he melts the heart, or inflames it, with a 
power which seems habitual and familiar to him. We 
see that in this man there was the gentleness, the trem- 
bling pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the 
force and passionate ardour of a hero. Tears lie in him, 
and consuming fire; as lightning lurks in the drops of 
the summer cloud. He has a resonance in his bosom 
for every note of human feeling; the high and the low, 
the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their 
turn to his 'lightly moved and all conceiving spirit.' 



198 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



And observe with what a fierce prompt force he grasps 
his subject, be it what it may! How he fixes, as it 
were, the full image of the matter in his eye ; full and 
clear in every lineament; and catches the real type and 
essence of it, amid a thousand accidents and superficial 
circumstances, no one of which misleads him ! Is it of 
reason; some truth to be discovered? No sophistry, 
no vain surface-logic detains him ; quick, resolute, un- 
erring, he pierces through into the marrow of the ques- 
tion; and speaks his verdict with an emphasis that can- 
not be forgotten. Is it of description; some visual ob- 
ject to be represented? No poet of any age or nation 
is more graphic than Burns: the characteristic features 
disclose themselves to him at a glance; three lines from 
his hand, and we have a likeness. And in that rough 
dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear and 
definite a likeness! It seems a draughtsman working 
with a burnt stick; and yet the burin of a Retzsch is 
not more expressive or exact. —M. Biims. 

TAM aSHANTER. 

Of the tenderness, the playful pathos, and many other 
kindred qualities of Burns's Poetry, much more might 
be said * * To speak of his individual writings ; * * 
* * we can look on but few of these pieces as, in strict 
critical language, deserving the name of Poems : they 
are rhymed eloquence, rhymed pathos, rhymed sense ; 
yet seldom essentially melodious, aerial, poetical. Tain 
d Shantcr itself, which enjoys so high a favour, does not 
appear to us, at all decisively, to come under this last 
category. It is not so much a poem, as a piece of 
sparkling rhetoric ; the heart and body of the story still 
lies hard and dead. He has not gone back, much less 
carried us back, into that dark, earnest, wondering age, 
when the tradition was believed, and where it took its 
rise ; he does not attempt, by any new-modelling of his 
supernatural ware, to strike anew that deep mysterious 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



199 



chord of human nature, which once responded to such 
things ; and which lives in us too, and will forever live, 
though silent now, or vibrating with far other notes, and 
to far different issues. Our German readers will under- 
stand us, when we say, that he is not the Tieck but the 
Musaus of this tale. Externally it is all green and liv- 
ing ; yet look closer, it is no firm growth, but only ivy 
on a rock. The piece does not properly cohere : the 
strange chasm which yawns in our incredulous imagin- 
ations between the Ayr public-house and the gate of 
Tophet, is nowhere bridged over, nay the idea of such 
a bridge is laughed at; and thus the Tragedy of the ad- 
venture becomes a mere drunken phantasmagoria, or 
many-colored spectrum painted on ale-vapours, and the 
Farce alone has any reality. We do not say that Burns 
should have made much more of this tradition ; we 
rather think that, for strictly poetical purposes, not much 
was to be made of it. Neither are we blind to the deep, 
varied, genial power displayed in what he has actually 
accomplished; but we find far more 'Shakspearean' 
qualities, as these of Tarn o Shanter have been fondly 
named, in many of his other pieces; nay, we incline to 
believe, that this latter might have been written, all but 
quite as well, by a man who, in place of genius, had 
only, possessed talent. —M. Bums. 

THE JOLLY BEGGARS. 

Perhaps we may venture to say, that the most strictly 
poetical of all his 'poems' is The Jolly Beggars. The 
subject truly is among the lowest in Nature ; but it only 
the more shows our Poet's gift in raising it into the do- 
main of Art. To our minds, this piece seems thoroughly 
compacted; melted together, refined; and poured forth 
in one flood of true liquid harmony. It is light, airy, 
soft of movement; yet sharp and precise in its details; 
every face is a portrait: that rattcle carlin, that wee 
Apollo that Son of Mars, are Scottish, yet ideal ; the 



200 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY, 

scene is at once a dream, and the very Ragcastle of 
'Poosie Nansie.' Farther, it seems in a considerable 
degree complete, a real self-supporting Whole, which is 
the highest merit in a poem. The blanket of the Night 
IS drawn asunder for a moment ; in full, ruddy, flaming 
light, these rough tatterdemalions are seen in their bois- 
terous revel; for the strong pulse of Life vindicates its 
right to gladness even here; and when the curtain 
closes, we prolong the action, without effort ; the next 
day as the last, our Caird and our Balladmonger are 
singmg and soldering; their 'brats and callets' are 
hawking, beggmg, cheating ; and some other night in 
new combinations, they will wring from Fate another 
hour of wassail and good cheer. Apart from the uni- 
versal sympathy with man which this again bespeaks 
m Burns, a genuine inspiration and no inconsiderable 
technical talent are manifested here. There is the fidel- 
ity, humour, warm life and accurate painting and group- 
ing of some Teniers, for whom hostlers and carousing 
peasants are not without significance. It would be 
strange, doubtless, to call this the best of Burns's writ- 
ings: we mean to say only, that it seems to us the most 
perfect of its kind, as a piece of poetical composition, 
strictly so called. In the Beggars' Opera, in the Beg- 
gars Bush, as other critics have already remarked 
there is nothing which, in real poetic vigour, equals this 
cantata; nothing, as we think, which comes within 
many degrees of it. —M. Bums. 

BURNS'S SONGS. 
But by far the most finished, complete and truly in- 
spired pieces of Burns are, without dispute, to be found 
among his Songs. It is here that, although through a 
small aperture, his light shines with least obstruction; in 
Its highest beauty, and pure sunny clearness. The reason 
may be, that Song is a brief simple species of compo- 
sition ; and requires nothing so much for its perfection 



LITERATUJIE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 2OI 

as genuine poetic feeling, genuine music of heart. Yet 
the Song has its rules equally with the Tragedy ; rules 
which in most cases are poorly fulfilled, in many cases 
are not so much as felt. We might write a long essay 
on the Songs of Burns; which we reckon by far the 
best that Britain has yet produced: for, indeed, since the 
era of Queen Elizabeth, we know not that, by any other 
hand, aught truly worth attention has been accom- 
plished in this department. True we have songs enough 
'by persons of quality;' we have tawdry, hollow, wine- 
bred madrigals ; many a rhymed speech ' in the flow- 
ing and watery vein of Ossorius the Portugal Bishop,* 
rich in sonorous words, and, for moral, dashed perhaps 
with some tints, of a sentimental sensuality; all which 
many persons cease not from endeavouring to sing; 
though for most part, we fear, the music is but from the 
throat outwards, or at best from some region far 
enough short of the Soul; not in which, but in a certain 
inane Limbo of the Fancy, or even in some vaporous 
debatable-land on the outskirts of the Nervous System 
most of such madrigals and rhymed -speeches seem to 
have originated. With the Songs of Burns we must 
not name these things. Independently of the clear, 
manly, heartfelt sentiment that ever pervades his po- 
etry, his Songs are honest in another point of view : in 
form, as well as in spirit. They do not affect to be set 
to music, but they actually and in themselves are music ; 
they have received their life, and fashioned themselves 
together, in the medium of Harmony, as Venus rose 
from the bosom of the sea. The story, the feeling, is 
not detailed, but suggested; not said, or spouted, in 
rhetorical completeness and coherence: hwtsung, in fit- 
ful gushes, in glowing hints, in fantastic breaks, in zvarb- 
lings not of the voice only, but of the whole mind. We 
consider this to be the essence of a song; and that no 
songs since the little careless catches, and, as it were, 
drops of song, which Shakspeare has here and there 



202 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

sprinkled over his Plays, fulfil this condition in nearly 
the same degree as most of Burns's do. Such grace 
and truth of external movement, too, presupposes in 
general a corresponding force and truth of sentiment and 
inward meaning. The Songs of Burns are not more 
perfect in the former quality than in the latter. With 
what tenderness he sings, yet with what vehemence and 
entireness! There is a piercing wail in his sorrow, the 
purest rapture in his joy; he burns with the sternest ire, 
or laughs with the loudest or sliest mirth ; and yet he is 
sweet and soft, 'sweet as the smile when fond lovers 
meet, and soft as their parting tear ! ' If we farther take 
into account the immense variety of his subjects; how, 
from the loud flowing revel in Willie breivd a Peck 
d Maut, to the still, rapt enthusiasm of sadness for Mary 
in Heaven ; from the glad kind greeting oi Auld Lang- 
syne, or the comic archness of Duncan Gray, to the 
fire-eyed fury of Scots ivha hae ivi' Wallace bled, he 
has found a tone and Avords for every mood of man's 
heart, — it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the 
first of all our Song- writers, for we know not where to 
find one worthy of being second to him. —M. Bums. 

SCOTT'S POETRY. 

It were late in the day to write criticisms on those Metri- 
cal Romances: at the same time, we may remark, the 
great popularity they had seems natural enough. In the 
first place, there was the indisputable impress of worth, of 
genuine human force in them. This, which lies in some 
degree, or is thought to lie, at the bottom of all popu- 
larity, did to an unusual degree disclose itself in these 
rhymed romances of Scott's. Pictures were actually 
painted and presented ; human emotions conceived and 
sympathised with. Considering what wretched Della- 
Cruscan and other vamping-up of old worn-out tatters 
was the staple article then, it may be granted that Scott's 
excellence was superior and supreme. When a Hayley 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 203 

was the main singer, a Scott might well be hailed with 
warm welcome. Consider whether the Loves of the 
Plants, and even the Loves of the Triangles, could be 
worth the loves and hates of men and women ! Scott 
was as preferable to what he displaced, as the substance 
is to wearisomely repeated shadow of a substance. But, 
in the second place, we may say that the kind of worth 
which Scott manifested was fitted especially for the then 
temper of men. We have called it an age fallen into 
spiritual langour, destitute of belief, yet terrified at 
scepticism ; reduced to live a stinted half-life, under 
strange new circumstances. Now vigorous whole-life, 
this was what of all things these delineations offered. 
The reader was carried back to rough strong times, 
wherein those maladies of ours had not yet arisen. 
Brawny fighters, all cased in buff and iron,' their hearts 
too sheathed in oak and triple brass, caprioled their huge 
war-horses, shook their death-doing spears; and went 
forth in the most determined manner, nothing doubting. 
The reader sighed, yet not without a reflex solacement : 
" Oh, that I too had lived in those times, had never known 
these logic-cobwebs, this doubt, this sickness : and been 
and felt myself alive among men alive ! " Add lastly, 
that in this new-found poetic world there was no call 
for effort on the reader's part ; what excellence they 
had, exhibited itself at a glance. It was for the reader, 
not the El Dorado only, but a beatific land of Cock- 
aigne and Paradise of Donothings ! The reader, what 
the vast majority of readers so long to do, was allowed 
to lie down at his ease, and be ministered to. What 
the Turkish bathkeeper is said to aim at with his fric- 
tions, and shampooings, and fomentings, more or less 
effectually, that the patient in total idleness may have 
the delights of activity, — was here to a considerable ex- 
tent realised. The languid imagination fell back into 
its rest ; an artist was there who could supply it with 
high-painted scenes, with sequences of stirring action, 



204 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



and whisper to it, Be at ease, and let thy tepid element 
be comfortable to thee. 'The rude man,' says a critic, 
'requires only to see somethiniT going on. The man 
of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of 
complete refinement must be made to reflect.' —M. Scott. 

THE LATTER HALF OF TITE XVIIIth CENTURY. 
WERTER. 

At the present day, it would be difficult for us, satisfied, 
nay sated to nausea, as we have been with the doctrines 
of Sentimentality, to estimate the boundless interest 
which Wcrter must have excited when first given to the 
world. It was then new in all senses; it was wonder- 
ful, yet wished for, both in its own country and in every 
other. The Literature of Germany had as yet but 
partially awakened from its long torpor: deep learning, 
deep reflection, have at no time been wanting there; 
but the creative spirit had for above a century been al- 
most extinct. Of late, however, the Ramlers, Rabeners, 
Gellerts, had attained to no inconsiderable polish of 
style; Kiopstock's Messias had called forth the admira- 
tion, and perhaps still more the pride, of the country, 
as a piece of art; a high enthusiasm was abroad; Lessing 
had roused the minds of men to a deeper and truer in- 
terest in Literature, had even decidedly begun to intro- 
duce a heartier, warmer and more expressive style. 
The Germans were on the alert: in expectation, or at 
least in full readiness for some far bolder impulse; wait- 
ing for the Poet that might speak to them from the 
heart to the heart. It was in Goethe that such a poet 
was to be given them. 

Nay the Literature of other countries, placid, self-sat- 
isfied as they might seem, was in an equally expectant 
condition. Everywhere, as in Germany, there v/as pol- 
ish and languor, external glitter and internal vacuity ; 
it was not fire, but a picture of fire, at which no soul 
could be warmed. Literature had sunk from its former 



IJTERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 205 

vocation: it no longer held the mirror up to Nature ; no 
•longer reflected, in many-colotired expressive symbols, 
the actual passions, the hopes, sorrows, joys of living 
men ; but dwelt in a remote conventional world, in 
Castles of Otranto, in Epigoniads and Leonidases, 
among clear, metallic heroes, and white, high, stainless 
beauties, in whom the drapery and elocution were no- 
wise the least important qualities. Men thought it right 
that the heart should swell into magnanimity with Carac- 
tacus and Cato, and melt into sorrow with many an Eliza 
and Adelaide ; but the heart was in no haste either to swell 
or to melt. Some pulses of heroical sentiment, a few 
z/;matural tears might, with conscientious readers, be 
actually squeezed forth on such occasions : but they 
came only from the surface of the mind ; nay, had the 
conscientious man considered of the matter, he would 
have found that they ought not to have come at all. 
Our only English poet of the period was Goldsmith ; 
a pure, clear, genuine spirit, had he been of depth or 
strength sufficient ; his Vicar of Wakefield remains the 
best of all modern Idyls ; but it is and was nothing 
more. And consider our leading writers ; consider the 
poetry of Gray, and the prose of Johnson. The first a 
laborious mosaic, through the hard stiff lineaments of 
which little life or true grace could be expected to look: 
real feeling, and all freedom of expressing it, are sacri- 
ficed to pomp, to cold splendour ; for vigour we have a 
certain mouthing vehemence, too elegant indeed to be 
tumid, yet essentially foreign to the heart, and seen to 
extend no deeper than the mere voice and gestures. 
Were it not for his Letters, which are full of warm ex- 
uberant power, we might almost doubt whether Gray 
was a man of genius; nay, was a living man at all, and 
not rather some thousand-times more cunningly devised 
poetical turning-loom, than that of Swift's Philosophers 
in Laputa. Johnson's prose is true, indeed, and sound, 
and full of practical sense ; few men have seen more 



2o6 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

clearly into the motives, the interests, the whole walk 
and conversation of the living busy world as it lay be- 
fore him ; but farther than this busy, and, to most of 
us, rather prosaic world, he seldom looked: his instruc- 
tion is for men of business, and in regard to matters of 
business alone. Prudence is the highest Virtue he can 
inculcate ; are for that finer portion of our nature, that 
portion of it which belongs essentially to Literature 
strictly so called, where our highest feelings, our best 
joys and keenest sorrows, our Doubt, our Love, our Re- 
ligion reside, he has no word to utter; no remedy, no 
counsel to give us in our straits ; or at most, if, like 
poor Boswell, the patient is importunate, will answer : 
"My Dear Sir, endeavour to clear your mind of Cant." 
The turn which Philosophical speculation had taken 
in the preceding age corresponded with this tendency, 
and enhanced its narcotic influences ; or w^as, indeed, 
properly speaking, the root they had sprung from. 
Locke, himself a clear, humble-minded, patient, rever- 
ent, nay religious man, had paved the way for banishing 
religion from the world. Mind, by being modelled in 
men's imaginations into a Shape, a Visibility ; and rea- 
soned of as if it had been some composite, divisible and 
reunitable substance, some finer chemical salt, or curi- 
ous piece of logical joinery, — began to lose its immate- 
rial, mysterious, divine though invisible character : it 
was tacitly figured as somediing that might, were our 
organs fine enough, be seen. Yet who had ever seen 
it ? Who could ever see it? Thus by degrees it passed 
into a Doubt, a Relation, some faint Possibility ; and at 
last into a highly-probable Nonenity. Following 
Locke's footsteps, the French had discovered that 'as 
the stomach secretes Chyle, so does the brain secrete 
Thought.' And what then was Religion, what was 
Poetry, what was all high and heroic feeling ? Chiefly 
a delusion ; often a false and pernicious one. Poetry, 
indeed, was still to be preserved ; because Poetry was 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



207 



a useful thing : men needed amusement, and loved to 
amuse themselves with Poetry : the play-house was a 
pretty lounge of an evening; then there were so many 
precepts, satirical, didactic, so much more impressive 
for the rhyme ; to say nothing of your occasional verses, 
birthday odes, epithalamiums epicediums, by which the 
'dream of existence may be so highly sweetened and em- 
bellished.' Nay, does not Poetry, acting on the imagina- 
tions of men, excite them to daring purposes; sometimes, 
as in the case of Tyrtaeus, to fight better ; in which wise 
may it not rank as a useful stimulant to man, along with 
Opium and Scotch Whisky, the manufacture of which 
is allowed by law ? In Heaven's name, then, let Poetry 
be preserved. 

With Religion, however, it fared somewhat worse. 
In the eyes of Voltaire and his disciples, Religion was 
a superfluity, indeed a nuisance. Here, it is true, his 
followers have since found that he went too far : that 
Religion, being a great sanction to civil morality, is of 
use for keeping society in order, or at least the lower 
classes, who have not the feeling of Honour in due 
force ; and therefore, as a considerable help to the Con- 
stable and Hangman, ought decidedly to be kept up. 
But such toleration is the fruit only of later days. In 
those times, there was no question but how to get rid 
of it, root and branch, the sooner the better. A gleam 
of zeal, nay we will call it, however basely alloyed, a 
glow of real enthusiasm and love of truth, may have 
animated the minds of these men, as they looked abroad 
on the pestilent jungle of Superstition, and hoped to 
clear the earth of it forever. This little glow, so alloyed, 
so contaminated with pride and other poor or bad ad- 
mixtures, was the last which thinking men were to ex- 
perience in Europe for a time. So is it always in regard 
to Religious Belief, how degraded and defaced soever : 
the delight of the Destroyer and Denier is no pure de- 
light, and must soon pass away. With bold, with skil- 



2o8 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

ful hand, Voltaire set his torch to the jungle: it blazed 
aloft to heaven ; and the flame exhilarated and com- 
forted the incendiaries ; but, unhappily, such comfort 
could not continue. Ere long this flame, with its cheer- 
ful light and heat, was gone : the jungle, it is true, had 
been consumed ; but with its entanglements, its shelter 
and its spots of verdure also ; and the black, chill, ashy 
swamp, left in its stead, seemed for a time a greater 
evil than the other. 

In such a state of painful obstruction, extending itself 
everywhere over Europe, and already master of Ger- 
many, lay the general mind, when Goethe first appeared 
in Literature. Whatever belonged to the finer nature 
of man had withered under the Harmattan breath of 
Doubt, or passed away in the conflagration of open 
Infidelity; and now, where the Tree of Life once bloomed 
and brought fruit of goodliest savour, there was only 
barrenness and desolation. To such as could find suf- 
ficient interest in the day-labour and day-wages of 
earthly existence; in the resources of the five bodily 
Senses, and of Vanity, the only mental sense which yet 
flourished, which flourished indeed with gigantic vigour, 
matters were still not so bad. Such men helped them- 
selves forward, as they will generally do; and found the 
world, if not an altogether proper sphere (for every man, 
disguise it as he may, has a soul in him), at least a tol- 
erable enough place; where by one item and another, 
some comfort, or show of comfort, might from time to 
time be got up, and these few years, especially since 
they were so few, be spent without much murmuring. 
But to men afflicted with the 'malady of Thought,' some 
devoutness of temper was an inevitable heritage: to sych 
the noisy forum of the world could appear but an empty, 
altogether insufficient concern; and the whole scene of 
hfe had become hopeless enough. Unhappily, such feel- 
ings are yet by no means so infrequent with ourselves, 
that we need stop here to depict them. That state of 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 209 

Unbelief from which the Germans do seem to be in 
some measure delivered, still presses with incubus force 
on the greater part of Europe*; and nation after nation, 
each in its own way, feels that the first of all moral prob- 
lems is how to cast it off, or how to rise above it. Gov- 
ernments naturally attempt the first expedient; Philoso- 
phers, in general, the second. — M. Goethe. 

GOETHE'S WERTER. 

The poet, says Schiller, is a citizen not only of his 
country, but of his time. Whatever occupies and in- 
terests men in general, will interest him still more. 
That nameless Unrest, the blind struggle of a soul in 
bondage, that high, sad, longing Discontent, which was 
agitating every bosom, had driven Goethe almost to 
despair. All felt it; he alone could give it voice. And 
here lies the secret of his popularity; in his deep, sus- 
ceptive heart, he felt a thousand times more keenly what 
every one was feeling; with the creative gift which be- 
longed to him as a poet, he bodied it forth into visible 
shape, gave it a local habitation and a name; and so 
made himself the spokesman of his generation. Wertcr 
is but the cry of that dim, rooted pain, under which all 
thoughtful men of a certain age were languishing: it 
paints the misery, it passionately utters the complaint; 
and heart and voice, all over Europe, loudly and at 
once respond to it. True, it prescribes no remedy; for 
that was a far different, far harder enterprise, to which 
other years and a higher culture were required; but 
even this utterance of the pain, even this little, for the 
present, is ardently grasped at, and with eager sympa- 
thy appropriated in every bosom. If Byron's life- 
weariness, his moody melancholy, and mad stormful in- 
dignation, borne on the tones of a wild and quite artless 
melody, could pierce so deep into many a British heart, 
now that the whole matter is no longer new, — is indeed 

* This was written in 1828. 
14 



210 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

old and trite, — we may judge with what vehement ac- 
ceptance this Werter must have been welcomed, coming 
as it did like a voice from unknown regions; the first 
thrilling peal of that impassioned dirge, which, in 
country after country, men's ears have listened to, till 
they were deaf to all else. For Werter infusing itself 
into the core and whole spirit of Literature, gave birth 
to a race of Sentimentalists, who have raged and wailed 
in every part of the world; till better light dawned on 
them, or at worst, exhausted Nature had laid herself to 
sleep, and it was discovered that lamenting was an un- 
productive labour. These funereal choristers, in Ger- 
many a loud, haggard, tumultuous, as well as tearful 
class, were named the Kraftmaimer, or Power- men; but 
have all long since, like sick children, cried themselves to 
rest. Byron was our English Sentimentalist and Pow- 
er- rrian; the strongest of his kind in Europe; the wild- 
est, the gloomiest, and it may be hoped the last. —M. 
Goethe. 

SCHILLER'S POETRY. 

Schiller's intellectual character has, as indeed is al- 
w'ays the case, an accurate conformity with his moral 
one. Here too he is simple in hi^ excellence; lofty 
rather than expansive or varied; pure, divinely ardent 
rather than great, A noble sensibility, the truest sym- 
pathy with Nature, in all forms, animates him; yet 
scarcely any creative gift altogether commensurate with 
this. If to his mind's eye all forms of Nature have a 
meaning and beauty, it is only under a few forms, chief- 
ly of the severe or pathetic kind, that he can body forth 
this meaning, can represent as a Poet what as a Thinker 
he discerns and loves. We might say, his music is true 
spheral music; yet only with {&\^ tones, in simple mod- 
ulation; no full choral harmony is to be heard in it. 
That Schiller, at least in his later years, attained a gen- 
uine poetic style, and dwelt, more or less, in the peren- 
nial regions of his Art, no one will deny : yet still his 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 2 II 

poetry shows rather hke a partial than a universal gift ; 
the laboured product of certain faculties rather than the 
spontaneous product of his whole nature. At the sum- 
mit of the pyre, there is indeed white flame; but the 
materials are not all inflamed, perhaps not all ignited. 
Nay often it seems to us, as if poetry were, on the 
whole, not his essential gift; as if his genius were re- 
flective in a still higher degree than creative; philosoph- 
ical and oratorical rather than poetic. To the last, 
there is a stiffness in him, a certain infusibility. His 
genius is not an yEolian-harp for the common wind to 
play with, and make wild free melody; but a scientific 
harmonica, which being artfully touched will yield rich 
notes, though in limited measure. It may be, indeed, 
or rather it is highly probable, that of the gifts which 
lay in him only a small portion was unfolded: for we 
are to recollect that nothing came to him without a 
strenuous effort; and tliat he was called away at middle 
age. At all events, here as we find him, we should say, 
that of all his endowments the most perfect is under- 
standing. Accurate, thorough insight is a quality we 
miss in none of his productions, whatever else may be 
wanting. He has an intellectual vision, clear, wide, 
piercing, methodical; a truly philosophic eye. Yet in 
regard to this also it is to be remarked, that the same 
simplicity, the same want of universality again displays 
itself He looks aloft rather than around. It is in high, 
far-seeing philosophic views that he delights; in specu- 
lations on Art, on the dignity and destiny of Man, rath- 
er than on the common doings and interests of Men. 
Nevertheless these latter, mean as they seem, are bound- 
less in significance ; for every the poorest aspect of 
Nature, especially of living Nature, is a type and man- 
ifestation of the invisible spirit that works in Nature. 
There is properly no object trivial or insignificant: but 
every finite thing, could we look well, is as a window, 
through which solemn vistas are opened into Infinitude 



212 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

itself. But neither as a Poet nor as a Thinker, neither 
in deUneation nor in exposition and discussion, does 
Schiller more than glance at such objects. For the 
most part, the Common is to him still the Common; or 
is idealised, rather as it were by mechanical art than by 
inspiration: not by deeper poetic or philosophic inspec- 
tion, disclosing new beauty in its everyday features, but 
rather by deducting these, by casting them aside, and 
dwelling on what brighter features may remain in it. 
Herein Schiller, as indeed he himself was modestly 
aware, differs essentially from most great poets; and from 
none more than from his great contemporary, Goethe. 
Such intellectual pre-eminence as this, valuable though 
it be, is the easiest and the least valuable; a pre-emi- 
nence which, indeed, captivates the general eye, but 
may, after all, have little intrinsic grandeur. Less in 
rising into lofty abstractions lies the difficulty, than in 
seeing well and lovingly the complexities of what is at 
hand. He is wise who can instruct us and assist us in 
the business of daily virtuous living; he who trains us 
to see old truth under Academic formularies may be 
wise or not, as it chances ; but we love to see Wisdom 
in unpretending forms, to recognise her royal features 
under week-day vesture. — There may be more true 
spiritual force in a Proverb than in a Philosophical Sys- 
tem. A King in the midst of his body-guards, with 
all his trumpets, war-horses and gilt standard-bearers, 
will look great though he be little ; but only some Ro- 
man Carus can give audience to satrap-ambassadors, 
while seated on the ground, with a woollen cap, and 
supping on boiled pease, like a common soldier. 

In all Schiller's earlier writings, nay more or less in 
the whole of his writings, this aristocratic fastidiousness, 
this comparatively barren elevation, appears as a lead- 
ing characteristic. In speculation he is either altogether 
abstract and systematic, or he dwells on old, conven- 
tionally-noble themes ; never looking abroad, over the 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 213 

many-coloured stream of life, to elucidate and ennoble 
it ; or only looking on it, so to speak, from a college 
window. The philosophy even of his Histories, for ex- 
ample, founds itself mainly on the perfectibility of man, 
the efifect of constitutions, of religions, and other such 
high, purely scientific objects. In his Poetry we have 
a similar manifestation. The interest turns on pre- 
scribed, old-established matters ; common love-mania, 
passionate greatness, enthusiasm for liberty and the like. 
This even in Don Karlos ; a work of what may be 
called his transition-period, the turning-point between 
his earlier and his later period, where still we find Posa, 
the favourite hero, 'towering aloft, far-shining, clear, and 
also cold and vacant, as a sea-beacon.' In after years, 
Schiller himself saw well that the greatest lay not here. 
With unwearied effort he strove to lower and to widen 
his sphere ; and not without success, as many of his 
Poems testify ; for example the Lied der Glocke (Song 
of the Bells), every way a noble composition ; and, in a 
still higher degree, the tragedy of WilJielnt Tell, the 
last, and, so far as spirit and style are concerned, the 
best of all his dramas. —M. Schiller. 

HIS WANT OF HUMOUR. 

Closely connected with this imperfection, both as 
cause and as consequence, is Schiller's singular want of 
Humour. Humour is properly the exponent of low 
things ; that which first renders them poetical to the 
mind. The man of Humor sees common life, even 
mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love ; 
whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humour 
has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of po- 
etic genius. He who wants it, be his other gifts what 
they may, has only half a mind ; an eye for what is 
above him, not for what is about him or below him. 
Now, among all writers of any real poetic genius, we 
cannot recollect one who, in this respect, exhibits such 



214 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



total deficiency as Schiller. In his whole writings there 
is scarcely any vestige of it, scarcely any attempt that 
way. His nature was without Humour; and he had 
too true a feeling to adopt any counterfeit in its stead. 
Thus no drollery or caricature, still less any barren 
mockery, which, in the hundred cases are all that we 
find passing current as Humour, discover themselves in 
Schiller. His works are full of laboured earnestness ; 
he is the gravest of all writers. Some of his critical 
discussions, especially in the ySsthetische Briefe, where 
he designates the ultimate height of a man's culture by 
the title Spicltrieb (literary, sport-impulse), prove that 
he knew what Humour was, and how essential ; as in- 
deed, to his intellect, all forms of excellence, even the 
most alien to his own, were painted with a wonderful 
fidelity. Nevertheless, he himself attains not that height 
which he saw so clearly ; to the last the Spieltricb could 
be little more than a theory with him. With the single 
exception of Wallenstein s Lager, where too, the Hu- 
mour, if it be such, is not deep, his other attempts at 
mirth, fortunately very few, are of the heaviest. A 
rigid intensity, a serious enthusiastic ardour, majesty 
rather than grace, still more than lightness or sportful- 
ness, characterises him. Wit he had, such wit as keen 
intellectual insight can give ; yet even of this no large 
endowment. Perhaps he was too honest, too sincere, 
for the exercise of wit ; too intent on the deeper rela- 
tions of things to note their more transient collisions. 
Besides, he dealt in Affirmation, and not in Negation ; 
in which last, it has been said, the material of wit chiefly 

lies. — M. Schiller. 

HIS GREA TNESS. 

These observations are to point out for us the special 
department and limits of Schiller's excellence ; nowise 
to call in question its reality. Of his noble sense for 
Truth, both in speculation and in action ; of his deep 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 2 I 5 

genial insight into Nature ; and the hving harmcny in 
which he renders back what is highest and grandest in 
Nature, no reader of his works need be reminded. In 
whatever belongs to the pathetic, the heroic, the trag- 
ically elevating, Schiller is at home; a master; nay per- 
haps the greatest of all late poets. To the .assiduous 
student, moreover, much else that lay in Schiller, but 
was never worked into shape, will become partially vis- 
ible : deep, inexhaustible mines of thought and feeling ; 
a whole world of gifts, the finest produce of which was 
but beginning to be realised. To his high-minded, un- 
wearied efforts what was impossible, had length of years 
been granted him ! There is a tone in some of his later 
pieces, which here and there breathes of the very high- 
est region of Art. Nor are the natural or accidental 
defects we have noticed in his genius, even as it stands, 
such as to exclude him from the rank of great Poets. 
Poets whom the whole world reckons great have, more 
than once, exhibited the like. Milton, for example, 
shares most of them with him: like Schiller, he dwells, 
with full power, only in the high and earnest; in all other 
provinces exhibiting a certain inaptitude, and ele- 
phantine unpliancy: he too has little Humour; his 
coarse invective has in it contemptuous emphasis 
enough, yet scarcely any graceful sport. Indeed, on 
the positive side also, these two worthies are not with- 
out a resemblance. Under far other circumstances, 
with less massiveness and vehement strength of soul, 
there is in Schiller the same intensity ; the same con- 
centration, and towards similar objects, towards what- 
ever is Sublime in Nature and in Art ; which sublimi- 
ties they both, each in his several way, worship with 
undivided heart. There is not in Schiller's nature the 
same rich complexity of rhythm as in Milton's, with its 
depths of linked sweetness ; yet in Schiller too there is 
something of the same pure swelling force, some tone 
which, like Milton's, is deep, majestic, solemn. —M. 

SchilUr. 



2l6 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 
Among younger students of German Literature, the 
question often arises, and is warmly mooted: Whethet 
Schiller or Goethe is the greater Poet ? Of this question 
we must be allowed to say that it seems rather a slender 
one, and for two reasons. First, because Schiller and 
Goethe are of totally dissimilar endowments and en- 
deavours, in regard to all matters intellectual, and cannot 
well be compared together as .Poets. Secondly, because 
if the question mean to ask, which Poet is on the whole 
the rarer and more excellent, as probably it does, it must 
be considered as long ago abundantly answered. To the 
clear-sighted and modest Schiller, above all, such a 
question would have appeared surprising. No one knew 
better than himself, that as Goethe was a born Poet, so 
he was in great part a made Poet; that as the one spirit 
was intuitive, all-embracing, instinct with melody, so the 
other was scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it 
were artificially melodious. Besides, Goethe has lived 
to perfect his natural gift, which the less happy Schiller 
was not permitted to do. The former accordingly 
is the national Poet; the latter is not and never could 
have been. We once heard a German remark that read- 
ers till their twenty-fifth year usually prefer Schiller; 
after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe. This probably 
was no unfair illustration of the question. Schiller can 
seem higher than Goethe only because he is narrower. 
Thus to unpractised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay a 
Strasburg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem 
higher than a Chimborazo; because the former rise ab- 
ruptly, without abutment or environment; the latter rises 
gradually, carrying half a world aloft with it ; and only 
the deeper azure of the heavens, the widened horizon, 
the 'eternal sunshine,' disclose to the geographer that 
the ' Regions of Change ' lies far below him. —M. SchiiUr. 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE, 



217 



ME PHIS TOPHELES. 
Mephistopheles comes before us, not arrayed in the 
terrors of Cocytus and Phlegethon, but in the natural 
indeUble deformity of Wickedness; he is the Devil, not 
of Superstition, but of Knowledge. Here is no cloven 
foot, or horns and tail: he himself informs us that, dur- 
ing the late march of intellect, the very Devil has partic- 
ipated in the spirit of the age, and laid these appendages 
aside. Doubtless, Mephistopheles 'has the manners of a 
gentleman ' ; he ' knows the world ' ; nothing can exceed 
the easy tact with which he manages himself; his wit 
and sarcasm are unlimited; the cool heart- felt contempt 
with which he despises all things, human and divine, 
might make the fortune of half a dozen 'fellows about 
town.' Yet, withal he is a devil in very deed ; a genuine 
Son of Night. He calls himself the Denier, and this 
truly is his name; for, as Voltaire did with historical 
doubts, so does he with all moral appearances ; settles 
them with a N'en croyez rien. The shrewd, all-informed 
intellect he has, is an attorney intellect: it can contradict, 
but it cannot affirm. With lynx vision, he descries at 
a glance the ridiculous, the unsuitable, the bad; but for 
the solemn, the noble, the worthy, he is blind as his an- 
cient Mother. Thus does he go along, qualifying, con- 
futing, despising; on all hands detecting the false, but 
without force to bring forth, or even to discern, any" 
glimpse of the true Poor Devil ! what truth should there 
be for him ? To see Falsehood is his only Truth : false- 
hood and evil are the rule, truth and good the exception 
which confirms it. He can believe in nothing but in 
his own self-conceit, and in the indestructible baseness, 
folly and hypocrisy of men. For him, virtue is some 
bubble of the blood: 'it stands written on his face that 
he never loved a living soul.' Nay, he cannot even hate: 
at Faust himself he has no grudge; he merely tempts 
him by way of experiment, and to pass the time scien- 
tifically. Such a combination of perfect Understanding 



2i8 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

with perfect Selfishness, of logical Life with moral Death; 
so universal a Denier, both in heart and head, — is un- 
doubtedly a child of Darkness, an emissary of the prime- 
val Nothing: and coming forward as he does, like a per- 
son of breeding, and without ^any flavour of brimstone, 
may stand here, in his merely spiritual deformity, at once 
potent, dangerous and contemptible, as the best and only 
genuine Devil of these latter times. — M. Goethe's Helena. 

FA UST. 
In strong contrast with this impersonation of modern 
worldly-mindedness, stands Faust himself, by nature 
the antagonist of it, but destined also to be its victim. 
If Mephistopheles represent the spirit of Denial, Faust 
may represent that of Inquiry and Endeavour: the two 
are, by necessity, in conflict; the light and the darkness 
of man's life and mind. Intrinsically, Faust is a noble 
being, though no wise one. His desires are toward the 
high and true ; nay, with a whirlwind impetuosity he 
rushed forth over the Universe to grasp all excellence ; 
his heart yearns towards the infinite and the invisible: 
only that he knows not the conditions under which 
alone this is to be attained. Confiding in his feeling of 
himself, he has started with the tacit persuasion, so 
natural to all men, that he at least, however it may fare 
with others, shall and must be happy ; a deep-seated, 
though only half-conscious conviction lurks in him, that 
wherever he is not successful, fortune has dealt with 
him unjustly. His purposes are fair, nay generous: 
why should he not prosper in them? For in all his 
lofty aspirings, his strivings after truth and more than 
human greatness of mind, it has never struck him to 
inquire how he, the striver, was warranted for such en- 
terprises: with what faculty Nature had equipped him; 
within what limits she had hemmed him in; by what 
right he pretended to be happy, or could, some short 
space ago, have pretended to be at all. Experience, in- 
deed, will teai;h him, for 'Experience is the best of 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 



219 



schoolmasters; only the school-fees are heavy.' As 
yet, too, disappointment, which fronts him on every 
hand, rather maddens than instructs. Faust has spent 
his youth and manhood, not as others do, in the sunny 
crowded paths of profit, or among the rosy bowers of 
pleasure, but darkly and alone in the search of Truth; 
is it fit that Truth should now hide herself, and his 
sleepless pilgrimage towards Knowledge and Vision end 
in the pale shadow of Doubt ? To his dream of a 
glorious higher happiness, all earthly happiness has been 
sacrificed; friendship, love, the social rewards of ambi- 
tion were cheerfully cast aside, for his eye and his heart 
were bent on a region' of clear and supreme good; and 
now, in its stead, he finds isolation, silence and despair. 
What solace remains? Virtue once promised to be her 
own reward; but because she does not pay him in the 
current coin of worldly enjoyment, he reckons her too a 
delusion ; and, like Brutus, reproaches as a shadow, what 
he once worshipped as a substance. Whither shall he 
now tend ? For his loadstars have gone out one by 
one ; and as the darkness fell, the strong steady wind 
has changed into a fierce and aimless tornado. Faust 
calls himself a monster, 'without object, yet without 
rest' The vehement, keen and stormful nature of the 
man is stung into fury, as he thinks of all he has en- 
dured and lost; he broods in gloomy meditation, and, 
like Bellerophon, wanders apart, 'eating his own 
heart'; or, bursting into fiery paroxysms, curses man's 
whole existence as a mockery ; curses hope and faith, 
and joy and care, and what is worst, 'curses patience 
more than all the rest.' Had his weak arm the power, 
he could smite the Universe asunder, as at the crack of 
Ijoom, and hurl his own vexed being along with it into 
the silence of Annihilation. 

Thus Faust is a man who has quitted the ways of 
vulgar men, without light to guide him on a better 
way. No longer restricted by the sympathies, the com 



220 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

mon interests and common persuasions by wJiich the 
mass of mortals, each individually ignorant, nay, it may 
be, stolid and altogether blind as to the proper aim of 
life, are yet held together, and, like stones in the chan- 
nel of a torrent, by their very multitude and mutual 
collision, are made to move with some regularity, — he 
is still but a slave; the slave of impulses, which are 
stronger, not truer or better, and the more unsafe that 
they are solitary. He sees the vulgar of mankind 
happy; but happy only in their baseness. Himself he 
feels to be peculiar ; the victim of a strange, and unex- 
ampled destiny; not as other men, he is 'with them, 
not ^/them.' There is misery here, nay, as Goethe has 
elsewhere wisely remarked, the beginning of madness 
itself It is only in the sentiment of companionship 
that men feel safe and assured: to all doubts and 'mys- 
terious questionings of destiny,' their sole satisfying 
answer is, Others do and suffer the like. Were it not 
for this, the dullest day-drudge of Mammon might 
think himself into unspeakable abysses of despair ; for 
he too is 'fearfully and wonderfully made'; Infinitude 
and Incomprehensibility surround him on this hand and 
that ; and the vague spectre Death, silent and sure as 
Time, is advancing at all moments to sweep him away 
forever. But he answers. Others do and suffer the like ; 
and plods along without misgivings. Were there but 
One Man in the world, he would be a terror to himself; 
and the highest man not less so than the lowest. Now 
it is as this One Man that Faust regards himself: he is 
divided from his fellows ; cannot answer with them, 
Others do the like ; and yet, why or how he specially is 
to do or suffer, will nowhere reveal itself For he is 
still in the ' gall of bitterness ' ; Pride, and an entire un- 
compromising though secret love of Self, are still the 
mainsprings of his conduct. Knowledge with him is 
precious only because it is power; even virtue he would 
love chiefly as a finer sort of sensuahty, and because it 



LITERATURE, AND THE LITERARY LIFE. 2? I 

was his virtue. A ravenous hunger for enjoyn:ent 
haunts him everywhere; the stinted allotments of earthly 
hfe are as a mockery to him: to the iron law of Force 
he will not yield, for his heart, though torn, is yet un- 
weakened, and till Humility shall open his eyes, the 
soft law of Wisdom will be hidden from him. 

To invest a man of this character with supernatural 
powers is but enabling him to repeat his error on a 
larger scale, to play the same false game with a deeper 
and more ruinous stake. Go where he may, he will 
'find himself again in a conditional world'; widen his 
sphere as he pleases, he will find it again encircled by 
the empire of Necessity ; the gay island of Existence is 
again but a fraction of the ancient realm of Night. 
Were he all-wise and all-powerful, perhaps he might be 
contented and virtuous ; scarcely otherwise. The poor- 
est human soul is infinite in wishes, and the infinite Un- 
wise was not made for one, but for all. Vain were it 
for Faust, by heaping height on height, to struggle 
towards infinitude; while to that law of Self-denial, by 
which alone man's narrow destiny may become an in- 
finitude within itself, he is still a stranger. Such, how- 
ever, is his attempt; not indeed incited by hope, but 
goaded on by despair, he unites himself with the Fiend, 
as with a stronger though a wicked agency; reckless of 
all issues, if so were that, by these means, the craving 
of his heart might be stayed, and the dark secret of 
Destiny unravelled or forgotten. —M. Goethe's Helena. 



IV. 

RELIGION 



RELIGION. 



RELIGION, 



It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion is 
the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a na- 
tion of men's. By religion I do not mean here the 
church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith 
which he will sign, and, in words or otherwise, assert ; 
not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see 
men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all 
degrees of worth or worthlessness under each or any 
of them. This is not what I call religion, this profes- 
sion and assertion ; which is often only a profession 
and assertion from the outworks of the man, from the 
mere argumentative region of him, if even so deep as 
that. But the thing a man does practically believe (and 
this is often enough without asserting it even to him- 
self, much less to others); the thing a man does practi- 
cally lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his 
vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his 
duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary 
thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest, 
That is his religion ; or, it may be, his mere scepticism 
and ;w-religion: the manner it is in which he feels him- 
self to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or 
No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you 
15 225 



226 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what 
the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a na- 
tion we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they 
had ? Was it Heathenism, — plurality of gods, mere 
sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and for 
chief recognised element therein Physical Force ? Was 
it Christianism ; faith in an Invisible, not as real only, 
but as the only reality; Time, through every meanest 
moment of it, resting on Eternity; Pagan empire of 
Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holi- 
ness ? Was it Scepticism, uncertainty and inquiry 
whether there was an Unseen World, any Mystery of 
Life except a mad one; — doubt as to all this, or per- 
haps unbelief and flat denial ? Answering of this 
question is giving us the soul of the history of the man 
or nation. The thoughts they had were the parents of 
the actions they did ; their feelings were parents of 
their thoughts ; it was the -unseen and spiritual in them 
that determined the outward and actual ; their religion, 
as I say, was the great fact about them. —H. I. 

PAGANISM. 

Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Pa- 
ganism ; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A 
bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusions, 
falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole field of 
Life ! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, 
if it were possible, with incredulity, — for truly it is not 
easy to understand that sane men could ever calmly, 
with their eyes open, believe and live by such a set of 
doctrines. That men should have worshipped their 
poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but stocks 
and stones, and all manner of animate and inanimate ob- 
jects; and fashioned for themselves such a distracted cha- 
os of hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe : 
all this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it is 
a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inextricable 



RELIGION. 



227 



jungle of mis- worships, misbeliefs, men, made as we are, 
did actually hold by, and life at home in. This is 
strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and silence 
over the depths of darkness that are in man ; if we re- 
joice in the heighths of purer vision he has attained to. 
Such things were and are in man ; in all men ; in us too. 
—H. I. 

THEORIES ABOUT PAGANISM. 

Some speculators have a short way of accounting for 
the Pagan religion : mere quackery, priestcraft, and 
dupery, say they ; no sane man ever did believe it, — 
merely contrived to persuade other men, not worthy of 
the name of sane, to believe it ! It will be often our 
duty to protest against this sort of hypothesis about 
men's doings and history ; and I here, on the very 
threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, 
and to all other isms by which man has ever for a 
length of time striven to walk in this world. They 
have all had a truth in them, or men would not have 
taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound ; in 
religions, above all in the more advanced decaying 
stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded : but 
quackery was never the originating influence in such 
things ; it was not the health and life of such things, 
but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about 
to die. Let us never forget this. It seems to me a 
most mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth 
to any faith even in savage men. Quackery gives birth 
to nothing ; gives death to all things. We shall not see 
into the true heart of anything, if we look merely at the 
quackeries of it ; if we do not reject the quackeries al- 
together ; as mere diseases, corruptions with which our 
and all men's sole duty is to have done with them, to 
sweep them out of our thoughts as out of our practice. 
— We shall begin to have a chance of understanding 
Paganism, when we first admit that to its followers it 
was, at one time, earnestly true. Let us consider it 



228 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

very certain that men did believe in Paganism ; men 
with open eyes, sound senses, men made altogether like 
ourselves ; that we, had we been there, should have 
believed in it. 

Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attrib- 
utes such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic 
minds, say these theorists; a shadowing forth in alle- 
gorical fable, in personification and visual form, of what 
such poetic minds had known and felt of this Universe. 
Which agrees, add they, with a primary law of human 
nature, still everywhere observably at work, though in 
less important things. That what a man feels intensely, 
he struggles to speak-out of him; to see represented 
before him in visual shape, and as if with a kind of life 
and historical reality in it. Now doubtless there is such 
a law, and it is one of the deepest in human nature ; 
neither need we doubt that it did operate fundamentally 
in this business. The hypothesis which ascribes Pagan- 
ism wholly or mostly to this agency, I call a little more 
respectable; but I cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. 
Think, would we believe, and take with us as our life- 
guidance, an allegory, a poetic sport ? Not sport but 
earnest is what we should require. It is a most earnest 
thing to be alive in this world ; to die is not sport for a 
man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a 
stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive ! I 
find, therefore, that though these Allegory theorists are 
on the way towards truth in this matter, they have not 
reached it either. Pagan Religion is indeed an Alle- 
gory, a Symbol of what men felt and knew about the 
Universe ; ' and all Religions are symbols of that, alter- 
ing always as that alters: but it seems to me a radical 
perversion, and even /^version, of the business, to put 
that forward as the origin and moving cause, when it 
was rather the result and termination. To get beautiful 
allegories, perfect poetic symbol, was not the wont of 
men ; but to know what they were to believe about 



RELIGION. 



229 



this Universe, what course they were to steer in it ; 
what, in this mysterious Life of theirs, they had to 
hope and to fear, to do and to forbear doing. The 
Pilgrim's Progress is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just 
and serious one; but consider whether Bunyan's Alle- 
gory could have preceded the Faith it symbolises ! The 
Faith had to be already there, standing believed by 
everybody; — of which the Allegory could tJieti become 
a shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say a 
sportful shadow, a mere play of the Fancy, in compar- 
ison with that awful Fact and scientific certainty, which 
it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory is the 
product of the certainty, not the producer of it ; not in 
Bunyan's nor in any other case. For Paganism, there- 
fore, we have still to inquire, Whence came that scien- 
tific certainty, the parent of such a bewildered heap of 
allegories, errors and confusions ? How was it, what 
was it ? —H. I. 

ORIGIN OF PAGANISM. 

You remember that fancy of Plato's, of a man who had 
grown to maturity in some dark distance, and was 
brought on a sudden into the upper air to see the sun 
rise. What would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment 
at the sight we daily witness with indifference ! With 
the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty 
of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that 
sight, he would discern it well to be Godlike, his soul 
would fall down in worship before it. Now, just such 
a childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. The 
first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first man that 
began to think, was precisely this child-man of Plato's. 
Simple, open as a child, yet with the depth and strength 
of a man. Nature had as yet no name to him ; he had 
not yet united under a name the infinite variety of 
sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which we now col- 
lectively name Universe, Nature, or the like, — and so 



230 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep- 
hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or 
formulas ; it stood naked, flashing-in on him there, beau- 
tiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, 
what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preter- 
natural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, 
the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas ; that great 
deep sea of. azure that swims overhead; the winds 
sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself 
together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain ; what 
is it ? Ay, what ? At bottom we do not yet know ; 
we can never know at all. It is npt by our superior 
insight that we escape the difficulty ; it is by our supe- 
rior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is 
by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hard- 
ened round us, encasing wholly every notion we form, 
is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, mere words. We 
call that fire of the black thunder-cloud 'electricity,' 
and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it 
out of glass and silk : but zvhat is it ? What made it ? 
Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has 
done much for us ; but it is a poor science that would 
hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Ne- 
science, whither we can never penetrate, on which all 
science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, 
after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle ; won- 
derful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will 
think of it. 

That great myster}^ of TiME, were there no other ; 
the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, 
rolHng, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing 
ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like 
exhalations, like apparitions which we are, and then are 
not : this is forever very literally a miracle ; a thing to 
strike us dumb, — for we have no word to speak about 
it. This Universe, ah me ! — what could the wild man 
know of it ; what can we yet know ? That it is a 



RELIGION. 



231 



Force, and thousandfold Complexity of Forces ; a Force 
which is not we. That is all ; it is not we, it is alto- 
gether different from us. Force, Force, everywhere 
Force ; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre 
of that. 'There is not a leaf rotting on the highway 
but has Force in it : how else could it rot ? ' Nay, 
surely to the Atheistic Thinker, if such a one were pos- 
sible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable 
ivhirlwind, high as Immensity, old as Eternity. What 
fe it ? God's Creation, the religious people answer ; it is 
the Almighty God's ! Atheistic science babbles poorly 
of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments and 
what-not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled 
up in Leyden jars, and sold over counters : but the 
natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly 
apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing, — ah, 
an unspeakable, godlike thing ; towards which the 
best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, 
devout prostration and humility of soul ; worship if not 
in words, then in silence. 

But now I remark farther : What in such a time as 
ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, 
the stripping off of those poor undevout wrappages, no- 
menclatures and scientific hearsays, — this, the ancient 
earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, 
did for itself The world, which is now divine only to 
the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his 
eyes upon it. He stood bare before it face to face. 
'AH was Godlike or God:' — Jean Paul still finds it so; 
the giant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of 
hearsays: but then there were no hearsays. Canopus 
shining-down over the desert, with its blue diamond 
brightness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far 
brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into 
the heart of the wild Ishmaclitish man, whom it was 
guiding through the sohtary waste there. To his wild 
heart, with all feelings in it, with no speech for any feel- 



232 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



ing, it might seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing- 
out on him from the great deep Eternity ; revealing the 
inner Splendour to him. Cannot we understand how 
these men worshipped Canopus ; became what we call 
Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the se- 
cret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcend- 
ent wonder ; wonder for which there is now no limit or 
measure; that is worship. To these primeval men, all 
things and everything they saw exist beside them were 
an emblem of the Godlike, of some God. 

And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. 
To us also, through every star, through every blade of 
grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open our 
mind and eyes ? We do nof worship in that way now : 
but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we 
call a 'poetic nature,' that we recognise how every ob- 
ject has a divine beauty in it ; how every object still 
verily is 'a window through which we may look into 
Infinitude itself? He that can discern the loveliness 
of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of Genius, 
gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even what he 
does, — in their own fashion. That they did it, in what 
fashion soever, was a merit : better than what the en- 
tirely stupid man did, what the horse and camel did, — 
namely, nothing ! 

But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon 
are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that more 
so than any of them is man such an emblem. You 
have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying, in 
reference to the Shekinah, or Ark of Testimony, visible 
Revelation of God, among the Hebrews : "The true She- 
kinah is Man !" Yes, it is even so : this is no vain 
phrase ; it is veritably so. The essence of our being, 
the mystery in us that calls itself "I," — ah, what words 
have we for such things ? — is a breath of Heaven ; the 
highest being reveals itself in man. This body, these 
facu'ties, this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for 



RELIGION. 



233 



that Unnamed? 'There is but one temple in the 
Universe,' says the devout Novalis, 'and that is the 
Body of Man. Nothing is hoher than that high form. 
Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revela- 
tion in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our 
hand on a human body !' This sounds much like a 
new flourish of rhetoric ; but it is not so. If well med- 
itated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact ; the expres- 
sion, in such words as can be had, of the actual truth 
of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, — the 
great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot under- 
stand it, we know not how to speak of it ; but we may 
feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. 

Well ; these truths were once more readily felt than 
now. The young generations of the world, who had 
in them the freshness of young children, and yet the 
depth of earnest men, who did not think they had fin- 
ished-off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely 
giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at 
them there, with awe and wonder : they felt better what 
of divinity is in man and Nature ; — they, without being 
mad, could zvorship Nature, and man more than any- 
thing else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I said above, 
admire without limit : this, in the full use of their facul- 
ties, with all sincerity of heart, they could do. I con- 
sider Hero-worship to be the grand modifying element 
in that ancient system of thought. What I called the 
perplexed jungle of Paganism sprang, we may say, out 
of many roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or 
natural object, was a root or fibre of a root ; but Hero- 
worship is the deepest root of all ; the tap-root, from 
which in a great degree all the rest were nourished and 
grown. —H. I. 

SCANDINA VI AN ANTHOLOGY. 

The primary characteristic of this old Northland My- 
thology I find to be Impersonation of the visible work- 



234 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



ings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of the 
workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly mirac- 
ulous, stupendous and divine. What we now lecture of 
as Science, they wondered at, and fell down in awe be- 
fore, as Religion. The dark hostile Powers of Nature 
they figure to themselves as ' Jo tuns' Giants, huge 
shaggy beings of a demonaic character, Frost, Fire, Sea- 
tempest ; these are Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, 
as Summer-heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of 
this Universe is divided between these two ; they dwell 
apart, in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell 
above in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen or Divinities; 
Jotunheim, a distant, dark chaotic land, is the home of 
the Jotuns. 

Curious all this ; and not idle or inane, if we will look 
at the foundation of it! The power of Fire or Flame, for 
instance, which we designate by some trivial chemical 
name, thereby hiding from ourselves the essential char- 
acter of wonder that dwells in it as in all things, is with 
these old Northmen, Loke, a most swift subtle Demon, 
of the brood of the Jotuns. The savages of the La- 
drones Islands too (say some Spanish voyagers) thought 
Fire, which they never had seen before, was a devil or 
god, that bit you sharply when you touched it, and that 
lived upon dry wood. From us too, no Chemistry, if it 
had not Stupidity to help it would hide that Flame is a 
Wonder. What /jt Flame? — Frost the old Norse Seer 
discerns to be a monstrous hoary J6tun,the Giant Thrym, 
Hrym, or Rime, the old word now nearly obsolete here, 
but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Rime 
was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living 
Jotun or Devil; the monstrous Jotun Rime drove home 
his Horses at night, sat 'combing their manes,' which 
Horses were Hail- Clouds, or fleet Frost- Winds. His 
Cows — No, not his but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir s 
Cows, are Icebergs: this Hymir 'looks at the rocks' 
with his devil-eye, and they split in the glance of it. 



RELIGION. 



235 



Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous or res- 
inous ; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or Thor^ — God 
also of beneficent Summer-heat. The thunder was his 
wrath ; the crathering of the black cloud in the drawinsf- 
down of Thor's angry brows ; the fire-bolt bursting out 
of Heaven is the all-rending Hammer flung from the 
hand of Thor : he urges his loud chariot over the moun- 
tain-tops, — that is the peal; wrathful he * blows in his 
red beard,' — that is the rustling stormblast before the 
thunder begin. Balder again, the White God, the beau- 
tiful, the just and benignant (whom the early Christian 
Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the sun, — 
beautifullest of visible things ; wondrous too, and divine 
still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs ! But per- 
haps the notablest god we hear tell of is one of whom 
Grimm the German etymologist finds trace : the God 
Wunsch, or Wish. The God Wish ; who could give us 
all that we ivislied! Is not this the sincerest and yet 
rudest voice of the spirit of man ? The rudest ideal 
that man ever found; which still shows itself in the latest 
forms of our Spiritual culture. Higher considerations 

have to teach us that the god Wish is not the true God. 
—H. I. 

THE TREE IGDRASIL. 
I LIKE, too, that representation they have of the Tree 
Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, 
the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep down in the 
Kingdoms of Hela or Death ; its trunk reaches up heav- 
en-high, spreads its boughs ovet the whole Universe: 
it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the 
Death-Kingdom, sit Three Nomas, Fates, — the Past, 
Present, Future; watering its roots from the Sacred Well. 
Its 'boughs,' with their buddings and disleafings, — 
Events, things suffered, things done, catastrophes, — 
stretch through all lands and times. Is not every leaf 
of it a biography, every fibre there an act or word ? Its 
boughs are Histories of Nations. The rustle of it is the 



236 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



noise of Human Existence, onwards from of old. It grows 
there, the breath of Human Passion rustUng through it; 
— or stormtost, the stormwind howUng through it Hke 
the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil the Tree of Ex- 
istence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what 
was done, what is doing, what will be done; 'the infi- 
nite conjugation of the verb To do.' Considering how 
human things circulate, each inextricably in commun- 
ion with all, — how the word I speak to you to-day is 
borrowed, not from Ulfila the Mcesogoth only, but from 
all men since the first man began to speak, — I find no 
similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful ; alto- 
gether beautiful and great. The 'Machine of the Uni- 
verse,' — alas, do but think of that in contrast! —H. I. 

ODIN. 

Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of nat- 
ure; different enough from what we believe of nature. 
Whence it specially came, one would not like to be com- 
pelled to say very minutely! One thing we may say: 
It came from the thoughts of Norse men; — from the 
thought, above all, of the first Norse man who had an 
original power of thinking. The First Norse 'man of 
genius,' as we should call him! Innumerable men had 
passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague won- 
der, such as the very animals may feel ; or with a pain- 
ful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel ; 
till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; 
whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering 
capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with 
the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men 
were not far from saying, were longing to say. The 
Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, 
round his Thought ; answering to it. Yes, even so ! Joy- 
ful to men as the dawning of day from night ; — is it not, 
indeed, the awakening for them from no being into be- 
ing, from death into life ? We still honour such a man: 



RELIGION. 



237 



call him Poet, Genius, and so forth ; but to these wild 
men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous 
unexpected blessing for them ; a Prophet, a God ! — 
Thought once awakened does not again slumber ; un- 
folds itself into a System of Thought ; grows in man 
after man, generation after generation, — till its full stat- 
ure is reached, and such System of Thought can grow 
no farther, but must give place to another. 

For the Norse people, the man now named Odin, and 
Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A Teach- 
er, and Captain of soul and of body ; a Hero, of worth 
?V/zmeasurable ; admiration for whom, transcending the 
known bounds, became adoration. Has he not the 
power of articulate Thinking ; and many other powers 
as yet miraculous ? So, with boundless gratitude, 
would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved 
for them the sphinx-enigma of this Universe ; given as- 
surance to them of their own destiny there ? By him 
they know now what they have to do here, what to 
look for hereafter. Existence has become articulate, 
melodious by him ; he first has made Life alive ! — We 
may call this Odin, the origin of Norse Mythology : 
Odin, or whatever name the First Norse Thinker bore 
while he was a man among men. His view of the Uni- 
verse once promulgated, a like view starts into being in 
all minds ; grows, keeps ever growing, while it contin- 
ues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but in- 
visibly, as in sympathetic ink ; at his word it starts into 
visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, 
the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival 
of a Thinker in the world ! —H. I. 

THE SOUL OF NORSE BELIEF. 

Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all that 
fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions,- in their 
musical Mythologies, the main practical belief a man 
could have was probably not much more than this: of the 



238 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Valkyrs and the Hall of Odin ; of an inflexible Des- 
tiny ; and that the one thing needful for a man was 
to be brave. The Valkyrs are Choosers of the Slain : a 
Destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying to bend or 
soften, has appointed who is to be slain ; this was a fun- 
damental point for the Norse believer ; — as indeed it is 
for all earnest men everywhere, for a Mahomet, a Luther, 
for a Napoleon too. It lies at the basis this for every 
such man ; it is the woof out of which his whole system 
of thought is woven. The Valkyrs ; and then that 
these Choosers lead the brave to a heavenly Hall of 
Odin ; only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, 
into the realms of Hela the Death-goddess: I take this 
to have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They 
understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be 
brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, but 
despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. 
Valour is still value. The first duty for a man is still 
that of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear ; we 
we cannot act at all till then. A man's acts are slavish, 
not true but specious ; his very thoughts are false, he 
thinks too as a slave and coward, till he have got Fear 
under his feet. Odin's creed, if we disentangle the real 
kernel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and 
must be valiant ; he must march forward and quit him- 
self like a man, — trusting imperturbably in the appoinc- 
ment and choice of the upper Powers ; and, on the 
whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the complete- 
ness of his victory over Fear will determine how much 
of a man he is. —ff. /. 

ISLAM. 

Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during the 
month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence ; as indeed 
was the' Arab custom; a praiseworthy custom, which 
such a man, above all, would find natural and useful 
Communing with his own heart, in the silence of the 



RELIGION. 



239 



mountains; himself silent; open to the 'small still 
voices'; it was a right natural custom ! Mahomet was 
in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a cavern 
in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Ramadhan, to 
pass the month in prayer, and meditation on those great 
questions, he one day told his wife Kadijah, who with 
his household was with him or near him this year, That 
by the unspeakable special favour of Heaven he had 
now found it all out ; was in doubt and darkness no 
longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols and Formu- 
las were nothing, miserable bits of wood ; that there was 
one God in and over all f and we must leave all Idols, 
and look to him. That God is great; and that there 
is nothing else great ! He is the Reality. Wooden 
Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, 
sustains us yet ; we and all things are but the shadow 
of Him ; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splen- 
dour. ^ Allah akbar, God is great'; — and then also 
* Islam,' that we must submit to God. That our whole 
strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever 
He do to us. For this world and the other ! The 
thing He sends to us, were it death and worse than 
death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves 
to God. — 'If this be Islam,' says Goethe, 'do we not 
all live in Islam?' Yes, all of us that have any moral 
life^ we all live so. It has ever been held the highest 
wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity, — 
Necessity will make him submit, — but to know and 
believe well that the stern thing which Necessity has 
ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted 
there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this 
great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain ; to 
know that it had verily, though deep beyond his sound- 
ings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was God ; — that 
his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, 
and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, 
obeying it as unquestionable. 



240 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



I say, this is yet the only true moraUty known. A 
man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road to- 
wards sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to 
the great deep Law of the World, in spite of all super- 
ficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss cal- 
culations ; he is victorious while he co-operates with 
that great central Law, not victorious otherwise : — and 
surely his first chance of co-operating with it, or getting 
into the course of it, is to know with his whole soul 
that it is ; that it is good and alone good ! This is the 
soul of Islam ; it is properly the soul of Christianity ,- — 
for Islam is definable as a confused form of Christian- 
ity ; had Christianity not been, neither had it been. 
Christianity also commands us, before all, to be resigned 
to God. We are to take no counsel with flesh-and- 
blood ; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and 
wishes : to know that we know nothing ; that the worst 
and cruellest to our eyes is not what it seems ; that we 
have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God 
above, and say, It is good and wise, God is great ! 
"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Islam 
means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. 
This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has re- 
vealed to our Earth. —H. ll. 

GROWTH OF MAHOMETANISM. 

On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Ma- 
homet's is a kind of Christianity ; has a genuine element 
of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to 
be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian 
God Wish, the god of all rude men, this has been en- 
larged into a Heaven by Mahomet ; but a Heaven sym- 
bolical of sacred Duty, and to be earned by faith and 
well-doing, by vaUant action, and a divine patience 
which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Pagan- 
ism, and a truly celestial element superadded to that. 
Call it not false ; look not at the falsehood of it, look 



RELIGION. 



241 



at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has 
been the reHgion and Hfe-guidance of the fifth part of 
the whole kindred of mankind. Above all things, it 
has been a reHgion heartily believed. These Arabs 
believe their religion, and try to live by it ! No Chris- 
tians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English 
Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their 
Faith as the Moslems do by theirs, — believing it wholly, 
fronting Time with it, and Eternity with it. This night 
the watchman on the streets of Cairo when he cries, 
"Who goes?" will hear from the passenger, along with 
his answer, "There is no God but God." Allah Akbar, 
Islam, sounds through the souls, and whole daily ex- 
istence, of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries 
preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal 
Idolaters; — displacing what is worse, nothing that is 
better or good. 

To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness 
into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A 
poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts 
since the creation of the world : a Hero- Prophet was 
sent down to them with a word they could believe : see, 
the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has 
grown world- great; within one century afterwards, 
Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that; — 
glancing in valour and splendour and the light of genius, 
Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of 
the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of 
a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon 
as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and 
that one century, — is it not as if a spark had fallen, one 
spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable 
sand ; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes 
heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada ! I said, the Great 
Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest 
of men waited for him Hke fuel, and then they too 
would flame. —H. II. 
16 



242 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



MEDIEVAL CATHOLICISM— DANTE. 



Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol with- 
al, an emblematic representation of his Belief about 
this Universe : — some Critic in a future age, Kke those 
Scandinavian ones the other day, who has ceased alto- 
gether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 
'Allegory,' perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime 
embodiment, or sublimest, of the soul of Christianity. 
It expresses, as in huge world-wide architectural em- 
blems, how the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to 
be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it 
all turns; that these two differ not by prcfcrability of 
one to the other, but by incompatibility absolute and 
infinite ; that the one is excellent and high as light and 
Heaven, the other hideous, black as Gehenna and the 
Pit of Hell! Everlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, 
with everlasting Pity, — all Christianism, as Dante and 
the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Emblemed : 
and yet, as I urged the other day, with what entire 
truth of purpose; how unconscious of any embleming! 
Hell, Pjjrgatory, Paradise : these things were not fash- 
ioned as emblems; was there, in our Modern European 
Mind, any thought at all of their being emblems ! 
Were they not indubitable awful facts, the whole heart 
of man taking them for practically true, all Nature 
everywhere confirming them ? So is it always in these 
things. Men do not believe an Allegory. The future 
Critic, whatever his new thought may be, who considers 
this of Dante to have been all got-up as an Allegory, will 
commit one sore mistake ! * * Dante is the spokesman 
of the Middle Ages ; the thought they lived by stands 
here, in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, 
terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Med- 
itation of all the good men who had gone before him. 
Precious they ; but also is not he precious ? Much, had 
not he spoken, would have been dumb ; not dead, yet 
living voiceless. —H. ill. 



RELIGION. 



243 



SHAA'SPEJRE'S RELIGION. 
Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may- 
recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; of an 
insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up 
in another strain. Nature seemed to this man also 
di\'ine ; z^/^speakable, deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: 
'We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' That 
scroll in Westminster Abbey, which few read with un- 
derstanding, is of the depth of any Seer. But the man 
sang, did not preach, except musically. We called 
Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. 
May we not call Shakspeare the still more melodious 
Priest of a true Catholicism, the 'Universal Church' of 
the Future and of all times ? No narrow superstition, 
harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or per- 
version : a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a 
thousandfold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all 
Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We 
may say without offence, that there rises a kind of uni- 
versal Psalm out of this Shakspeare too ; not unfit to 
make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. 
Not in disharmony with these, if we understand them, 
but in harmony! — I cannot call this Shakspeare a 
'Sceptic,' as some do ; his indifference to the creeds and 
theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: 
neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Pat- 
riotism ; nor sceptic, though he says little about his 
Faith. Such 'indifference' was the fruit of his great- 
ness withal : his whole heart was in his own grand 
sphere of worship (we may call it such) ; these other 
controversies, vitally important to other men, were not 
vital to him. —H. III. 

RE FORM A TIOM. 

Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in 
the way of music ; be tamed and taught by our Poets, 
as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus of old. 



2^4 '^^^^'^ CAKLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Or failing this rhythmic viiisical way, how good were 
it could we get so much as into the equable way ; I 
mean, if peaceable Priests, reforming from day to day, 
would always sufifice us ! But it is not so ; even this 
latter has not yet been realised. Alas, the battling Re- 
former too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable 
phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting : the 
very things that were once indispensable furtherances 
become obstructions ; and need to be shaken-off, and 
left behind us, — a business often of enormous difficulty. 
It is notable enough, surely, how a Theorem or Spirit- 
ual Representation, so we may call it, which once took- 
in the whole Universe, and was completely satisfactory 
in all parts of it to the highly-discursive acute intellect 
of Dante, one of the greatest in the world, — had in the 
course of another century become dubitable to common 
intellects; become deniable; and is now, to every one 
of us, flatly incredible, obsolete as Odin's Theorem! 
To Dante, human existence, and God's ways with men, 
were all well represented by those Malebolges, Piirgato- 
rios ; to Luther not well. How was this ? Why could 
not Dante's Catholicism continue ; but Luther's Pro- 
testantism must needs follow ? Alas, nothing will co)i- 
tinue. * * 

Every man as I have stated somewhere, is not only a 
learner but a doer : he learns with the mind given him 
what has been; but with the same mind he discovers 
farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. 
Absolutely without originality there is no man. No 
man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his 
grandfather believed : he enlarges somewhat, by fresh 
discovery, his view of the Universe, and consequently 
his Theorem of the Universe, — which is an infinite 
Universe, and can never be embraced wholly or finally 
by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlarge- 
ment : he enlarges somewhat, I say ; finds somewhat 
that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, 



RELIGION. 



245 



false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has 
discovered or observed. It is the history of every man; 
and in the history of Mankind we see it summed- up 
into great historical amounts, — revolutions, new epochs. 
Dante's Mountaia of Purgatory does not stand 'in the 
ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Columbus has 
once sailed thither ! Men find no such thing extant in 
the other Hemisphere. It is not there. It must cease 
to be believed to be there. So with all beliefs whatso- 
ever in this world, — all Systems of Belief, and Systems 
of Practice that spring from these. 

If we add now the melancholy fact that when Belief 
waxes uncertain. Practice too becomes unsound, and 
errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and 
more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolu- 
tion. At all turns, a man who will do faithfully, needs 
to believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn 
the world's suffrage ; if he cannot dispense with the 
world's suffrage, and make his own suffrage serve, he is 
a poor eye-servant; the work committed to him will be 
;«z.ydone. Every such man is a daily contributor to the 
inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he does, dis- 
honestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a 
. new offence, parent of a new misery to somebody or 
other. Offences accumulate till they become insup- 
portable ; and are then violently burst through, cleared- 
off" as by explosion. Dante's sublime Catholicism, 
incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse by 
faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be torn 
asunder by a Luther ; Shakspeare's noble Feudalism, 
as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a 
P^rench Revolution. The accumulation of offences is, 
as we say, too literally exploded, blasted asunder vol- 
canically ; and there are long troublous periods before 
matters come to a settlement again. —H. iv. 



246 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



THE DIET OF WORMS. 



The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 
17th of April, 1521, may be considered as the greatest 
scene in Modern /European History ; the point, indeed, 
from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation 
takes it rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, 
it had come to this. The young Emperor Charles 
Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal Nuncios, 
dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there : 
Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he 
will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits 
there on this hand : on that, stands up for God's Truth, 
one man, the poor miner Hans Luther's Son. PViends 
had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go ; he 
could not be advised. A large company of friends 
rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; 
he answered, "Were there as many Devils in Worms 
as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on the 
morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded 
the windows and housetops, some of them calling out 
to him, in solemn words, not to recant: "Whosoever 
denieth me before men ! " they cried to him, — as in a 
kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in 
reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, 
lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black 
spectral Nightmare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling it- 
self Father in God, and what not: "Free us; it rests 
with thee; desert us not!" Luther did not desert us. 
His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its re- 
spectful, wise and honest tone ; submissive to whatsoever 
could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any 
more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his 
own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what 
was his own, human infirmity entered into it ; unguard- 
ed anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it 
were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. 
But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of 



RELIGION. 



247 



God, he could not recant it. How could he? "Con- 
fute me," he concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else 
by plain just arguments : I cannot recant otherwise. 
For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against 
conscience. Here stand I ; I can do no other : God as- 
sist me!" — It is, as we say, the greatest moment in 
the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, En- 
gland and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work 
these two centuries ; French Revolution, Europe and 
its work everywhere at present : the germ of it all lay 
there : had. Luther in that moment done other, it had 
all been otherwise ! The European World was asking 
him : Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant 
putrescence, loathesome accursed death ; or, with what- 
ever paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be 
cured and live ? — //. IV. 

PRO TES TANTISM. 
Luther did what every man that God has made has 
not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to 
do : answered a Falsehood when it questioned him. 
Dost thou believe me ? — No ! — At what cost soever, 
without counting of costs, this thing behoved to be done. 
Union, organisation spiritual and material, a far nobler 
than any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I 
never doubt, is coming for the world ; sure to come. 
But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, 
will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. 
With union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to 
speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. 
Peace ? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome 
grave is peaceable. We hope for a living peace, not a 
dead one ! —H. IV. 

''NO POPERY." 

And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings 
of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old 
was true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days it needed 



248 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, to get 
itself reckoned true. It was good then ; nay there is in 
the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of 'No 
Popery,' is foolish enough in these days. The specu- 
lation that Popery is on the increase, building new 
chapels, and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever 
started. Very curious: to count-up a few Popish 
chapels, listen to a few Protestant logic-choppings, — to 
much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself 
Protestant, and say : See, Protestantism is dead; Popism 
is more alive than it, will be alive after it ! Drowsy in- 
anities, not a {^w, that call themselves Protestant are 
dead ; but Protestantism has not died yet, that I hear 
of! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days 
produced its Goethe, its Napoleon ; German Literature 
and the French Revolution ; rather considerable signs 
of hfe ! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive but Protest- 
antism ? The life of most else that one meets is a gal- 
vanic one merely, — not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of 
life ! —H. IV. 

THE REFORMATION AND THE NATIONS. 

Protestant or not Protestant ? The question meant 
everywhere: "Is there anything of nobleness in you, O 
Nation or is there nothing ? Are there, in this Nation, 
enough of heroic men to venture forward, and to battle 
for God's Truth versus the Devil's Falsehood, at the peril 
of life and more." Men who prefer death, and all else, to 
living under Falsehood, — who, once for all, will not live 
under Falsehood; but having drawn the sword against it 
(the time being come for that rare and important step), 
throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious clearness, 
with their whole soul: 'Come on, then! Life under 
Falsehood is not good for me; and we will try it out 
now. Let it be to the death between us, then ! ' 

Once risen into this divine white heat of temper, were 
it only for a season and not again, the Nation is thence- 



RELIGION. 



249 



forth considerable through all its remaining history. 
What immensities of dross and crypto-poisonous matter 
will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in 
the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his 
Puritans, — making England habitable even under the 
Charles- Second terms for a couple of centuries more. 
Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages by being thrown 
once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no 
Nation that has not had such divine paroxysms at any 
time, is apt to come to much. 

Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Poland, — the offer of the 
Reformation was made everywhere; and it is curious to 
see what has become of the Nations that would not hear 
it. In all countries were some that accepted; but in 
many there were not enough, and the rest, slowly or 
swiftly, with fatal difficult industry contrived to burn 
them out. Austria was once full of Protestants; but the 
hide-bound Flemish-Spanish Kaiser-element presiding 
over it, obstinately, for two centuries, kept saying, "No; 
we, with our dull obstinate Cimburgis underlip and lazy 
eyes, with our ponderous Austrian depth of Habituality 
and indolence of Intellect, we prefer steady darkness to 
uncertain new Light!" — and all men may see where 
Austria now is. Spain still more; poor Spain going 
about, at this time, making its '' pronunciamcntos ; " all 
the factious attorneys in its little towns assembling to 
pronounce virtually this, " The Old is a lie, then; — good 
Heavens, after we so long tried hard, harder than any 
nation, to think it a truth! — and if it be not Rights of 
Man, Red Republic and Progress of the Species, we 
know not what now to believe or do; and are as a people 
stumbling on steep places, in the darkness of midnight ! " 
— They refused Truth when she came ; and now Truth 
knows nothing of them. All stars, and heavenly lights, 
have become veiled to such men ; they must now follow 
terrestrial igjies fatui, and think them stars. That is the 
doom passed upon them. 



250 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Italy too had its Protestants ; but Italy killed them ; 
• managed to extinguish Protestantism. Italy put up si- 
lently with Practical Lies of all kinds; and shrugging its 
shoulders, preferred going into Dillettantism and'the Fine 
Arts. The Italians, instead of the sacred service of Fact 

and Performance, did Music. Painting, and the like: till 

even that has become impossible for them; and no noble 
Nation sunk from virtue to virtu, ever offered such a 
spectacle before. He that will prefer Dillettantism in 
.this world for his outfit, shall have it ; but all the gods 
Will depart from him ; and manful veracity, earnestness 
of purpose, devout depth of soul, shall no more be his. 
He can if he like make himself a soprano, and sing for 
hire ; and probably that is the real goal for him. 

But the sharpest-cut example is France; to which we 
constantly return for illustration. France, with its keen 
intellect, saw the truth and saw the falsity, in those Prot- 
estant times ; and, with its ardour of generous impulse, 
was prone enough to adopt the former. France was 
within a hairsbreadth of becoming actually Protestant. 
But France saw good to massacre Protestantism, and end 
it in the night of St. Bartholomew 1572. The celestial 
Apparitor of Heaven's Chancery, so we may speak, the 
Geinus of Fact and Veracity, has left his Writ of Sum- 
mons ; Writ was read ; — and replied to in this manner. 
The Genius of P^act and Veracity accordingly withdrew; 
— was staved-off, got kept away, for two hundred years! 
But the Writ of Summons had been served ; Heaven's 
Messenger could not stay away forever. No; he re- 
turned duly; with accounts run up, on compound inter- 
est, to the actual hour, in 1792 ; — and then, at last, there 
had to be a " Protestantism ; " and we know of what 
kind that was ! —F. iii. 8. 

REVIVAL OF ROMANISM. 
Popery cannot come back, any more than Pagan- 
ism can, — which also lingers in some countries. But, 



RELIGION. 



251 



indeed, it is with these things as with the ebbing 
of the sea : you look at the waves oscillating hither, 
thither on the beach ; for mimites you cannot tell how 
it is going ; look in half an hour where it is, — look in 
half a century where your Popehood is ! Alas, would 
there were no greater danger to our Europe than the 
poor old Pope's revival ! Thor may as soon try to re- 
vive. — And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The 
poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor 
has done, for some time yet ; nor ought it. We may 
say, the Old never dies till this happen, Till all the soul 
of good that was in it have got itself transfused into the 
New. While a good work remains capable of being 
done by the Romish form ; or, what is inclusive of all, 
while a pious life remains capable of being led by it, 
just so long, if we consider, will this or the other human 
soul adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So 
long it will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject 
it, till we in our practice too have appropriated whatso- 
ever of truth was in it. Then, but also not till then, it 
will have no charm more for any man. It lasts here 
for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can. —H. IV. 

FORMULAS. 

What we call 'Formulas' are not in their origin bad; 
they are indispensably good. Formula is mctliod, habi- 
tude ; found wherever man is found. Formulas fash- 
ion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading 
towards some sacred or high object, whither many men 
are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt 
earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing somewhat, — 
were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest, 
were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An invent- 
or was needed to do that, d, poet ; he has articulated the 
dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many 
hearts. This is his way of doing that ; these are his 
footsteps, the beginning of a 'Path.' And now see: 



252 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his 
foregoer, it is the easiest method. In the footsteps of 
his fofegoer, yet with improvements, with changes 
where such seem good ; at all events with enlargements, 
the Path ever widening itself as more travel it ; — till at 
last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world 
may travel and drive. While there remains a City or 
Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, 
the Highway shall be right welcome ! When the City 
is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner 
all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the 
world have come into existence, and gone out of exist- 
ence. F'ormulas all begin by being full of substance ; 
you may call them the skin, the articulation into shape, 
into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there : 
they had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, 
are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for 
the worshipper's heart. Much as we talk against For- 
mulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high 
significance of true Formulas ; that they were, and will 
ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation 
in this world. —H. V. 

FORIifS. 
All substances clothe themselves in forms : but there 
are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue un- 
suitable. As the briefest definition, one might say. 
Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly un- 
derstand that, will correspond to the real nature and 
purport of it, will be true, good ; forms which are con- 
sciously put round a substance, bad. I invite you to 
reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false in Cere- 
monial Form, earnest solemnity from empty pageant, in 
all human things, —ff- VI. 

VOLTAIRE AND SUPERSTITION. 
Intolerance, animosity call forward no cause ; and 
least of all beseems the cause of moral and religious 



RELIGION. 



253 



truth. A wise man has well reminded us, that 'in any 
controversy, the instant we feel angry, we have already 
ceased striving for Truth, and began striving for Our- 
selves.' Let no man doubt but Voltaire and his disci- 
ples, like all men and all things that live and act in 
God's world, will one day be found to have 'worked 
together for good.' Nay that, with all his evil, he has 
already accomplished good, must be admitted in the so- 
berest calculation. How much do we include in this 
little word: He gave the death-stab to modern Super- 
stition ! That horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, 
shunning the light, is passing away ; with all its racks, 
and poison-chalices, and foul sleeping-draughts, is pass- 
ing away without return. It was a most weighty ser- 
vice. Does not the cry of "No Popery," and some 
vague terror or sham terror of 'Smithfield fires,' still 
act on certain minds in these very days ? He who sees 
even a little way into the signs of the times sees well 
that both the Smithfield fires, and the Edinburgh 
thumb-screws (for these too must be held in remem- 
brance) are things which have long, very long, lain be- 
hind us ; divided from us by a wall of Centuries, trans- 
parent indeed, but more impassable than adamant. 
For, as we said. Superstition is in its death-lair : the last 
agonies may. endure for decades, or for centuries ; but 
it carries the iron in its heart, and will not vex the 
world any more. —M. Voltaire. 

RELIGION IN DANGER. 

That, with Superstition, Religion is also passing away, 
seems to us a still more ungrounded fear. Religion 
cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may 
hide the stars of the sky ; but the stars are there, and 
will reappear. On the whole, we must repeat the often 
repeated saying that it is unworthy a religious man to 
view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion; 
or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and 



254 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



brotherly commiseration. If he seek Truth, is he not 
our brother and to be pitied ? If he do not seek Truth, 
is he not still our brother, and to be pitied still more ? 
Old Ludovicus Vives has a story of a clown that killed 
hi-s ass because it had drunk up the moon, and he 
thought the world could ill spare that luminary. So he 
killed his ass, tit binani reddcret. The clown was well 
intentioned, but unwise. Let us not imitate him, let us 
not slay a faithful servant, who has carried us far. He 
has not drunk the moon ; but only the reflection of the 
moon, in his own poor water-pail, where too, it may be, 
he was drinking with purposes the most harmless. 
— M. Voltaire. 

MOVEMENT AND CHANGE. 

All human things are, have been and forever will be, 
in Movement and Change ; — as, indeed, for beings that 
exist in Time, by virtue of Time, and are made of 
Time, might have been long since understood. In some 
provinces, it is true, as in Experimental Science, this 
discovery is an old one ; but in most others it belongs 
wholly to these latter days. How often, in former ages, 
by eternal Creeds, eternal Forms of Government and 
the like, has it been attempted, fiercely enough, and 
with destructive violence, to chain -the Future under the 
Past ; and say to the Providence, whose ways with man 
are mysterious, and through the great deep : Hitherto 
shalt thou come, but no farther ! A wholly insane at- 
tempt; and for man himself, could it prosper, the fright- 
fullest of all enchantments, a very Life-in-Death. 
Man's task here below, the destiny of every individual 
man, is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman ; or 
say rather. Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer : by nature he 
has a strength for learning, for imitating; but also a 
strength for acting, for knowing on his own account. 
Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite ; the relations 
lying closest together modified by those latest discovered 
and lying farthest asunder? Could you ever spell-bind 



RELIGION. 



255 



man into a scholar merely, so that he had nothing to 
discover, to correct; could you ever establish a Theory 
of the Universe that were entire, unimprovable, and 
which needed only to be got by heart ; man then were 
spiritually defunct, the Species we now name Man had 
ceased to exist. But the gods, kinder to us than we are 
to ourselves, have forbidden such suicidal acts. As 
Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the Epicycles 
of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so does Paganism 
give place to Catholicism, Tyranny to Monarchy, and 
Feudalism to Representative Government, — where also 
the process does not stop. Perfection of Practice, like 
completeness of Opinion, is always approaching, never 
arrived ; Truth, in the words of Schiller, iinmer wird, 
nie ist ; never is, always is a-bcing. 

Sad, truly, were our condition did we know but this, 
that Change is universal and inevitable. Launched into 
a dark shoreless sea of Pyrrhonism, what would remain 
for us but to sail aimless, hopeless; or make madly 
merry, while the devouring Death had not yet engulfed 
us ? As indeed, we have seen many, and still see many 
do. Nevertheless so stands it not. The venerator of 
the Past (and to what pure heart is the Past, in that 
'moonlight of memory,' other than sad and holy?) 
sorrows not over its departure, as one utterly bereaved. 
The true Past departs not, nothing that was worthy in 
the Past departs; no Truth or Goodness realised by 
man ever dies, or can die ; but is all still here, and, 
recognised or not, lives and works through endless 
changes. If all things, to speak in the German dialect, 
are discerned by us, and exist for us, in an element of 
Time, and therefore of Mortality and Mutability; yet 
Time itself reposes on Eternity; the truly Great and 
Transcendental has its basis and substance in Eternity : 
stands revealed to us as Eternity in a Vesture of Time. 
Thus in all Poetry, Worship, Art, Society, as one form 
passes into another, nothing is lost : it is but the super- 



256 



THE CARI.Vr.K ANTHOLOGY. 



ficial, as it were the body only, that grows obsolete and 
dies; under the mortal body lies a soul \\\\\z\\ is immor- 
tal ; which anew incarnates itself in fairer revelation; 
and the Pi-esent is tlie livin_L^ sum-total of the whole 
Past. 

In Change, therefon:, there is nothing terrible, nothing 
supernatural: on the contrary, it lies in the very essence 
of our lot and life in this world. To-day is not yester- 
day : we ourselves change ; how can our Works and 
Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue 
always the same ? Change, indeed, is painful ; yet ever 
needful: and if Memory have its force and worth, so 
also has Hope. Nay, if we look well to it, what is all 
Derangement, and necessity of great Change, in itself 
such an evil, but the product simply of incj'cascd re- 
sources which the old methods can no longer administer; 
of new wealth which the old coffers will no longer con- 
tain ? * * Scei)ticism itself, with its innumerable 
mischiefs, what is it but the sour fruit of a most blessed 
increase, that of Knowledge ; a fruit too that will not 

always continue SOUrf —M. Characteristics. 

VOLTAIRE AGAINST CHRISTIANITY. 

His polemical procedure in this matter, it appears to us, 
must now be admitted to have been, on the whole, a 
shallow one. Through all its manifold forms, and invo- 
lutions, and repetitions, it turns, we believe exclusively, 
on one point: what Theologians have called the 'plen- 
ary Inspiration of the Scriptures ' ! This is the single 
wall, against which, through long years, and with innu- 
merable battering-rams and catapults and pop-guns, he 
unweariedly batters. Concede him this, and his ram 
swings freely to and fro through space: there is nothing 
farther it can even aim at. Tliat the sacred Books could 
be ought else than a l^ank-of-l-'aith Bills, for such and 
such quantities of Itnjoyment, payable at sight in the 
other world, value received ; which bill becomes waste 



RELIGION. 



257 



paper, the stamp bcin<::^ questioned: — that the Christian 
Rcliiiion eould have any dee])er foiindatioa than Ik^oks, 
coukl possibly be written in the purest nature of man, 
in mysterious, inefifaceable charaeters, to which Books, 
and all Revelations, and authentic traditons, were but a 
subsidiary matter, were but as the light whereby that 
divine writing was to be read ; — nothing of this seems 
to have, even in the faintest manner, occurred to him. 
Yet herein, as we believe that the whole world has now 
begun to discover, lies the real essence of the question; 
by the negative or affirmative decision of which the 
Cliristian Religion, anything that is worth calling by that 
name, must fall, or endure forever. We believe also, that 
• the wiser minds of our age have already come to agree- 
ment on this question ; or rather never were divided re- 
garding it. Christianity, the 'Worship of Sorrow,' has 
been recognised as divine, on far other grounds than ' Es- 
says on Miracles; ' and by considerations inhnitely deeper 
than would avail in any mere ' trial by jury.' He who 
argues against it, or for it, in this manner, may be re- 
garded as mistaking its nature: the Ithuriel, though to 
our eyes he wears a body and the fashion of arnKnir, 
cannot be wounded with material steel. Our fathers 
were wiser than we, when they said in deepest earnest- 
ness, what we often hear in shallow mockery, that Re- 
ligion is 'not of Sense, but of Faith ; not of Understand- 
ing, but of Reason.' He who finds himself without the 
latter, who by all his studying has failed to unfold it in 
himself, may have studied to great or to small purpose, 
wc say not which ; but of the Christian Religi(jn, as of 
many other things, he has and can have no knowl- 
edge. — M. Voltaire. 

CriKISTrANITY AND GREEK rJIILOSOrilY. 

The Christian Doctrine we often hear likened to the 
Greek Philosophy, and found, on all hands, some meas- 
urable way superior to it: but this also seems a mistake. 

17 



258 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



The Christian Doctrine, that Doctrine of HumlHty, in all 
senses godUke, and the parent of all godlike virtues, is 
not superior, or inferior, or equal, to any doctrine of Soc- 
rates or Thales; being of a totally different nature; dif- 
fering from these, as a perfect Ideal Poem does from a 
correct Computation in Arithmetic. He who composes 
it with such standards may lament that, beyond the 
mere letter, the purport of this divine Humility has never 
been disclosed to him; that the loftiest feeling hitherto 
vouchsafed to mankind is as yet hidden from his eyes. 
— M. Voltah-e. 

STOICISM. 

Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth with its 
injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeus trained thee : 
thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and even 
because it injures thee ; for this a Greater than Zeus was 
needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou that 
' Worship of Sorrow"? The Temple thereof, founded 
some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, over- 
grown with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures: 
nevertheless, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar still there, 
and its sacred Lamp perennially burning. —S. R. II. 9. 

ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. 

To the "Worship of Sorrow" ascribe what origin and 
genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, 
and been generated; is it not here? Feel it in' thy 
heart, and then say whether it is of God ! This is Belief; 
all else is Opinion, — for which latter whoso will let him 
worry and be worried. —S. R. II. 9. 

DENIAL. 

To the better order of minds any mad joy of Denial 
has long since ceased: the problem is not now to deny, 
but to ascertain and perform. —M. CharaderisHcs. 



RELIGION. 



259 



FREE- THINKER. 

The word Free-'dxvxC&^x no longer means the Denier 01 
Caviller, but the Believer, or the Ready to believe. 
— M. Characteristics. 

THE DISEA SE OF ME TA PH YSICS. 

Man stands as in the centre of Nature; his fraction of 
Time encircled by Eternity, his handbreadth of Space 
encircled by Infinitude : how shall he forbear asking 
himself, What am I; and Whence; and Whither? How 
too, except in slight partial hints, in kind asseverations 
and assurances, such as a mother quiets her fretfully in- 
quisitive child with, shall he get answer to such in- 
quiries ? 

The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a peren- 
nial one. In all ages, those questions of Death and Im- 
mortality, Origin of Evil, Freedom and Necessity, must, 
under new forms, anew make their appearance; ever, 
from time to time, must the attempt to shape for our- 
selves some Theorem of the Universe be repeated. 
And ever unsuccessfully: for what Theorem of the In- 
finite can the Finite render complete? We, the whole 
species of Mankind, "and our whole existence and his- 
tory, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean 
of the All; yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion 
thereof; partaking of its infinite tendencies: borne this 
way and that by its deep-swelling tides, and grand 
ocean-currents; — of which what faintest chance is there 
that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain 
the goings and comings? A region of Doubt, there- 
fore, hovers forever in the background; in Action alone 
can we have certainty. Nay, properly, Doubt is the in- 
dispensable, inexhaustible material whereon Action 
works, which Action has to fashion into Certainty and 
Reality; only on a canvas of Darkness, such is man's 
way of being, could the many-coloured picture of our 

Life paint itself and shine. —M. Characteristics, 



26o THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

SPECULATIVE METAPHYSICS. 

Truly, if we look into it, there is no more fruitless 
endeavour than this same, which the Metaphysician 
proper toils in: to educe Conviction out of Negation. 
How, by merely testing and rejecting what is not, shall 
we ever attain knowledge of what is? Metaphysical 
Speculation, as it begins in No or Nothingness, so it 
must needs end in Nothingness; circulates and must 
circulate in endless vortices ; creating, swallowing- 
itself Our being is made up of Light and Darkness, 
the Light resting on the Darkness, and balancing it; 
everywhere there is Dualism, Equipoise ; a perpetual 
Contradiction dwells in us: "Where shall I place my- 
self to escape from my own shadow ? " Consider it well. 
Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to rise above 
the mind ; to environ, and shut in, or as we say, coin- 
prcJiend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, 
as for the foolishest ! What strength of sinew, or ath- 
letic skill, will enable the stoutest athlete to fold his own 
body in his arms, and, by lifting, lift up himself? The 
Irish Saint swam the Channel 'carrying his head in his 
teeth ' ; but the feat has never been imitated. 

— M. Characteristics. 

BELIEE. 

Belief I define to be the healthy act of a maa's mind. 
It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting 
to believe ; — indescribable, as all vital acts are. We 
have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, 
but that it may see into something, give us clear belief 
and understanding about something, whereon we are 
then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a 
crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the 
first thing we find, and straightway believe that! All 
manner of doubt, inquiry, GKiipi^ as it is named, about 
all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. 
It is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is 



RELIGION. 261 

getting to know and believe. Belief comes out of all 
this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden roots. 
But now if, even on common things, we require that a 
man keep his doubts silent, and not babble of them till 
they in some measure become affirmations or denials ; 
how much more in regard to the highest things, impos- 
sible to speak-of in words at all ! That a man parade 
his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic 
(which means at best only the manner of telling us 
your thought, your belief or disbelief about a thing) is 
the triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, 
this is as if you should overturn the tree, and instead of 
green boughs, leaves and fruits, show us ugly taloned 
roots turned-up into the air, — and no growth, only 
death and misery going on ! —H. V. 

STA TE OF RELIGION. UNBELIEF. 

To what extent theological Unbelief, we mean intellect- 
ual dissent from the Church, in its view of Holy Writ, 
prevails at this day, would be a highly important, were it 
not, under any circumstances, an almost impossible 
inquiry. But the Unbelief, which is of a still more fun- 
damental character, every man may see prevailing, with 
scarcely any but the faintest contradiction, all around 
him; even in the pulpit itself Religion in most coun- 
tries, more or less in every country, is no longer what 
it was, and should be, — a thousand- voiced psalm from 
the heart of Man to his invisible Father, the fountain of 
all Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and revealed in every rev- 
elation of these ; but for the most part, a wise pruden- 
tial feeling grounded on mere calculation: a matter, as 
all others now are, of Expediency and Utility; whereby 
some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be 
exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoy- 
ment. Thus Religion too is profit, a working for wages; 
not Reverence, but vulgar Hope or Fear. Many, we 
know, very many, we hope, are still religious in a far 



262 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

dififerent sense ; were it not so our case were too desper- 
ate: but to witness that such is the temper of the times, 
we take any calm observant man, who agrees or disa- 
grees in our feehng on the matter, and ask him whether 
our vietv of it is not in general well-founded. —M. Signs 
of the Times. 

TEACHING RELIGION. 
And now how teach Religion? By plying with litur- 
gies, catechisms, credos; droning thirty-nine or other 
articles incessantly into the infant ear ? Friends ! In 
that case, why not apply to Birmingham, and have Ma- 
chines made, and set up at all street-corners, in high- 
ways and byways, to repeat and vociferate the same, 
not ceasing night or day ? The genius of Birmingham 
is adequate to that. Albertus Magnus had a leather 
man that could articulate; not to speak of Martinus 
Scriblerus' Niirnberg man that could reason as well as 
we know who ! Depend upon it, Birmingham can 
make machines to repeat liturgies and articles ; to do 
whatsoever feat is mechanical. And what were all 
schoolmasters, nay all priests and churches compared 
with this Birmingham iron Church ! Votes of two mil- 
lions in aid of the church were then something. You 
order, at so many pounds a-head, so many thousand 
iron parsons as your grant covers ; and fix them by 
satisfactory masonry in all quarters whersoever wanted, 
to preach there independent of the world. In loud 
thoroughfares, still more in unawakened districts, troub- 
led with argumentative infidelity, you make the wind- 
pipes wider, strengthen the main steam-cyHnder; your 
parson preaches, to the due pitch, while you give him 
coal ; and fears no man or thing. Here were a " Church- 
extension " ; to which I, with my last penny, did I be- 
lieve in it, would subscribe. 

Ye blind leaders of the blind! Are we Calmucks, 
that pray by turning of a rotatory calabash with written 
prayers in it? Is Mammon and machinery the' means 



RELIGION. 263 

of converting human souls, as of spinning cotton ? Is 
God, as Jean Paul predicted it would be, become verily 
a Force; the ^ther too a gas! Alas that Atheism 
should have got the length of putting on priests' vest- 
ments, and penetrating into the -sanctuary itself! Can 
dronings of articles, repetitions of liturgies, and all the 
cash and contrivance of Birmingham and the Bank of 
England united bring ethereal fire into a human soul, 
quicken it out of earthly darkness into heavenly wis- 
dom? Soul is quickened only by soul. To "teach" 
religion, the first thing needful, and also the last and the 
only thing, is finding of a man who Jias religion. All 
else follows from this, church-building, church-exten- 
sion, whatever else is needful follows; without this 
nothing will follow. — Ch. X. 

A NEW CLERGY. 
There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of Proph- 
ecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dispute: but 
in any case, hast thou not still Preaching enough ? A 
Preaching Friar settles himself in every village ; and 
builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom 
he preaches what most momentous doctrine is in him, for 
man's salvation; and dost thou not listen and beheve? 
Look well, thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the 
Mendicant Orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare- 
backed, fashion itself into shape, and teach and preach, 
zealously enough, for copper-alms and the love of God. 
These break in pieces the ancient idols ; and though 
themselves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are 
wont to do, mark-out the sites of new Churches, where 
the true God-ordained, that are to follow, may find au- 
dience, and minister. Said I not. Before the old skin 
was shed, the new had formed itself beneath it ? —S. R. 
III. 7. 

CHURCH OF EjVGLAaVD. 

We often hear that the Church is in danger ; and truly 
so it is, — in a danger it seems not to know of: for, with 



264 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

its tithes in the most perfect safety, its functions are be- 
con.mg more and more superseded. The true Chuixh 
of England, at this moment, lies in the Editors of its 
Newspapers. These preach to the people daily, weekly 
admon.shmg kmgs themselves ; a driving peace or war' 
w. h an authority which only the first Reformer Ind 
a long-past class of Popes, were possessed of- inflict 
ing moral censure; imparting moral encouragement" 
consolation, edification; in all ways dihgently 'aZn 
istenng the Discipline of the Church.' ft2y be^^" 
too, that in private disposition the new PreaXers some 
what resemble the Mendicant Friars of old dmes oT 

Tem'^Ld'h'' '°V^^^^ '""'''-''y -^ -thoTifs'tr: a': 
gem, and hunger for terrestrial things. -Af. si,„softAe 

CREEDS AND FORMS. 
Rituals, Liturgies, Credos, Sinai Thunder: I know 
more or less the history of these; the rise procuress de 
chne and fall of these. Can thunder from all dttlir?^: 
two azimuths repeated daily for centuries of ylars 

Perhaps I am grown to be a man now; and do not 
need the thunder and the terror any longer! Perhaps I 
am above being frightened; perhaps it fs not Fear "Lu 
Reverence alone, that shall now lead me ! ~P. a. p. Aj^I 

IfZ. Th ''";;'' ^r'^ ^^"'^^^ '^^>' ^^^ promulgated in 
Sma, Thunder, to the ear or imagination, or quite other- 
wise promulgated, are the Laws of God; transcendent 
everlasting, imperatively demanding obedience from all 
men. This without any thunder, or with never so much 
thunder thou, if there be any soul left in thee, canst 
know of a truth. The Universe, I say, is made b; Law 
the great Soul of the World is just and not unjust 
Look thou. If thou have eyes or soul left, into this great 
shoreless Incomprehensiole: in the heart of its tumultu- 
ous Appearances, Embroilments, and mad Time-vor- 



RELIGION. 



265 



texes, is there not, silent, eternal, an All-just, an All- 
beautiful ; sole Reality and ultimate controlling Power 
of the whole? This is not a figure of speech ; this is a 
fact. The Fact of Gravitation known to all animals, is 
not surer than this inner Fact, which may be known to 
all men. He who knows this, it will sink, silent, awful, 
unspeakable, into his heart. He will say with Faust : 
"Who dare name HiM ? " Most rituals or ' namings ' 
he will fall in with at present, are like to be ' namings' 
— which shall jpe nameless ! In silence, in the Eternal 
Temple, let him worship, if there be no fit word. Such 
knowledge, the crown of his whole spiritual being, the 
life of his life, let him keep and sacredly walk by. He 
has a religion. Hourly and daily, for himself and for 
the whole world, a faithful, unspoken, but not ineffect- 
ual prayer rises, "Thy will be done." His whole work 
on Earth is an emblematic spoken or acted prayer, Be 
the will of God done on Earth, — not the Devil's will, 
or any of the Devil's servants' wills ! He has a relig- 
ion, this man ; an everlasting Load-star that beams the 
brighter in the Heavens, the darker here on Earth grows 
the night around him. Thou, if thou know not this, what 
are all rituals, liturgies, mythologies, mass-chantings, 
turnings of the rotatory calabash ? They are as noth- 
ing; in a good many respects they are as less. Di- 
vorced from this, getting half-divorced from this, they 
are a thing to fill one with a kind of horror ; with a sa- 
cred inexpressible pity and fear. The most tragical 
thing a human eye can look on. It was said to the 
Prophet, "Behold, I will show thee worse things than 
these: women weeping to Thammuz." That was the 

acme of the Prophet's vision, — then as now. —P. 6^ P. 
in. 15. 

ROMAN AUGURS OUTDONE. 
We have Puseyisms, black-and-white surplice controver- 
sies: — do not, officially and otherwise, the select of the 
longest heads in England sit with intense application 



266 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

and iron gravity, in open forum, judging of 'prevenient 
grace'? Not a head of them suspects that it can be im- 
proper so to sit, or of the nature of treason against the 
Power who gave an Intellect to man ; — that it can be 
other than the duty of a good citizen to use hisGodgiven 
intellect in investigating prevenient grace, supervenient 
moonshine, or the colour of the Bishop's nightmare, if 
that happened to turn up. I consider them far ahead 
of Cicero's Roman Augurs with their chicken-bowels : 
"Behold these divine chicken-bowels,, O Senate and 
Roman People ; the midriff has fallen eastward ! " 
solemnly intimates one Augur. "By Proserpina and 
the triple Hecate!" exclaims the other, "I say the 
midriff has fallen to the west ! " And they look at one 
another with the seriousness of men prepared to die in 
their opinion, — the authentic seriousness of men betting 
at Tattersall's, or about to receive judgment in Chan- 
cery. There is in the Englishman something great, 
beyond all Roman greatness, in whatever line )^ou meet 
him ; even as a Latter-Day Augur he seeks his fellow ! 
— Poor devil, I believe it is his intense love of peace, 
and hatred of breeding discussions which lead nowhither, 
that has led him into this sad practice of amalgamating 
true and false. —L. D. P. IV. 

GOSPEL OF MAMMONISH. THE ENGLISH HELL. 

The word Hell (says Sauerteig,) is still frequently in use 
among the English People: but I could not without dif- 
ficulty ascertain what they meant by it. Hell generally 
signifies the Infinite Terror, the thing a man is infinitely 
afraid of, and shudders and shrinks from, struggling with 
his whole soul to escape from it. There is a Hell there- 
fore, if you will consider, which accompanies man, \n all 
stages of his history, and religious and other develop- 
ment; but the Hells of man and Peoples differ notably. 
With Christians it is the infinite terror -of being found 
guilty before the Just Judge. With old Romans, I con- 



RELIGION. 



267 



jecture, it was the terror not of Pluto, for whom probably 
they eared little, but of doing unworthily, doing un- 
virtuously, which was their word for un;/iauM\y. And 
now what is it, if you pierce through his Cants, his oft 
repeated Hearsays, what he calls his Worships and so 
forth, — what is it that the modern English soul docs, in 
very truth, dread infinitely, and contemplate with entire 
despair? What is his Hell, after all these reputable, oft 
repeated Hearsays, what is it ? With hesitation, with 
astonishment, I pronounce it to be : The terror of 
" Not succeeding ; " of not making money, fame, or some 
other figure in the world, — chiefly of not making money! 
Is not that a somewhat singular Hell? —P. ^ P. HI. 2. 

THE GOSPEL OF DILLETTANTISM. THE DEAD-SEA 
APES. 

But after all the Gospel of Dillettantism is still mourn- 
fuller than that of Mammonism. Mammonism, at least 
works ; this goes idle. Mammonism has seized some 
portion of the message of Nature to man ; and seizing 
that, and following it, will seize and appropriate more 
and more of Nature's message : but Dillettantism has 
missed it wholly. 'Make money': that will mean 
withal, *Do work in order to make money.' But 'Go 
gracefully idle in May fair,' what does or can that 
mean ? * * * 

Perhaps" few narratives in History or Mythology are 
more significant than that Moslem one, of Moses and 
the Dwellers by the Red Sea. A tribe of men dwelt 
on the shores of that same Asphaltic Lake ; and having 
forgotten, as we are all too prone to do, the inner facts 
of Nature, and taken up with the falsities and outer 
substances of it, were fallen into sad conditions, — verg- 
ing indeed towards a certain far deeper Lake. W^here- 
upon it pleased kind Heaven to send them the prophet 
Moses, with an instructive word of warning, ^ut of 
which might have sprung 'remedial measures' not a fewt 



268 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

But no : the men of the Dead Sea discovered, as the 
valet species always does in heroes or prophets, no 
comeHness in Moses ; Hstened with real tedium to 
Moses, with light grinning, or with splenetic sniffs and 
sneers, affecting even to yawn ; and signified, in short, 
that they found him a humbug, and even a bore. Such 
was the candid theory these men of the Asphalt Lake 
formed to themselves of Moses, That probably he was- a 
humbug, that certainly he was a bore. 

Moses withdrew ; but Nature and her rigorous verac- 
ities did not withdraw. The men of the Dead Sea, 
when we next went to visit them, were all 'changed' 
into Apes'; * sitting on the trees there, grinning now in 
the most unaffected manner ; gibbering and chattering 
very genuine nonsense ; finding the whole Universe 
now a most indisputable Humbug ! The Universe has 
becoi7ie a Humbug to the Apes who thought it one. 
There they sit and chatter, to this hour : only, I be • 
lieve, every Sabbath there returns to them a bewildered 
half-consciousness, half-reminiscence; and they sit, with 
their wizzened smoke-dried visages, and such an air of 
supreme tragicality as Apes may ; looking out through 
those blinking smoke-bleared eyes of theirs, into the 
wonderfuUest universal smoky Twilight and undecipher- 
able disordered Dusk of Things ; wholly an Uncer- 
tainty, Unintelligibility, tKey and it ; and for commen- 
tary thereon, here and there an unmusical chatter or 
mew : — truest, tragicallest Humbug conceivable by the 
mind of man or ape ! They made no use of their 
souls; and so have lost them. Their worship on the 
Sabbath now is to roost there, with unmusical screeches, 
and half-remember that they had souls. 

Didst thou never, O Traveller, fall in with parties of 
this tribe ? Meseems they are grown somewhat numer- 
ous in our day. —P. S^ P. III. 3. 

• * Sale's Koran (Introduction) . 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 269 

SOUL. 
A CERTAIN degree of soul, as Ben Jonson reminds lis, 
is indispensable to keep the very body from destruction 
of the frightfullest sort; to 'save us,' says he, 'the ex- 
pense of salt.' * * —P. &= P. 11. 2. 

My brother, thou must pray for a soul; struggle, as 
with life-and-death energy, to get back thy soul. * * 
He that has a soul unasphyxied will never want a re- 
ligion ; he that has a soul asphyxied, reduced to a suc- 
cedaneum for salt, will never find any religion, though 
you rose from the dead to preach him one. —P. &• P. 
///. 15. 

MORRISON'S PILL. 

But indeed when men and reformers ask for *a religion,' 
it is analogous to their asking, 'What would you have 
us to do?' and such like. They fancy that their re- 
ligion too shall be a kind of Morrison's Pill, which they 
have only to swallow once, and all will be well. Reso- 
lutely once gulp down your Religion, your Morrison's 
Pill, you have it all plain sailing now : you can follow 
your affairs, your no-affairs, go along money-hunting, 
pleasure-hunting, dillettantling, dangling, and miming 
and chattering hke a Dead-Sea Ape: your Morrison 
will do your business for you. Men's notions are very 
strange ! — Brother, I say there is not, was not, nor will 
ever be, in the wide circle of Nature, any Pill or Re- 
ligion of that character. Man cannot afford thee such; 
for the very gods it is impossible. I advise thee to 
renounce Morrison ; once for all, quit hope of the Uni- 
versal Pill. For body, for soul, for individual or society, 
there has not any such article been made. Non extat. 
In Created Nature it is not, was not, will not be. In 
the void imbroglios of Chaos only, and realms of Bed- 
lam, does some shadow of it hover, to bewilder and 
bemock the poor inhabitants there, —p. df p. ni. 15. 



270 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



METHODISM. 
Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own na- 
vel; asking itself with torturing anxiety of Hope and 
Fear, "Am I right, am I wrong? Shall I be saved, 
shall I not be damned?" — what is this at bottom, but 
a new phasis of Egoism, stretched out into the Infinite ; 
not always the heavenlier for its infinitude ! Brother, 
as soon as possible, endeavour to rise above all that. 
"Thou «r/ wrong ; thou art like to be damned : " con- 
sider that as the fact, reconcile thyself even to that, if 
thou be a man ; then first is the devouring Universe 
subdued under thee, and from the black murk of mid- 
night and noise of greedy Acheron, dawn as of an 
everlasting morning, how far above all Hope and all 
Fear, springs for thee, enlightening thy steep path, 

awakening in thy heart celestial Memnon's music ' 
—P. 6- P. II. 15. 

RELIGIONS AND NEW RELIGIONS. 
But we will leave this of 'Religion'; of which, to say 
truth, it is chiefly profitable in these unspeakable days 
to keep silence. Thou needest no 'New Religion'; nor 
art thou like to get any. Thou hast already more 're- 
ligion ' than thou makest use of This day, thou know- 
est ten commanded duties, seest in thy mind ten things 
which should be done, for one that thou doest ! Do 
one of them ; this of itself will show thee ten others 
which can and shall be done. "But my future fate ? " 
Yes, thy future fate indeed ? Thy future fate, while 
thou makest it the chief question, seems to me — ex- 
tremely questionable ! I do not think it can be good. 
Norse Odin, immemorial centuries ago, did not he, 
though a poor Heathen, in the dawn of Time, teach us 
that for the Dastard there was, and could be, no good 
fate ; no harbour anywhere, save down with Hela, in 
the pool of Night ! Dastards, Knaves, are they that 
lust for Pleasure, that tremble at Pain. For this world 
and for the next, Dastards are a class of creatures made 



RELIGION. 



271 



to be 'arrested'; they are good for nothing else, can 
look for nothing else. A greater than Odin has been 
here. A greater than Odin has taught us — not a 
greater Dastardism, I hope. —P. ^ P. III. 15. 

RELIGION. 
A man's 'religion' consists not of the many things he 
is in doubt of and tries to believe, but of the few he is 
assured of, and has no need of effort for believing. 
His religion, whatever it may be, is a discerned fact, 
and coherent system of discerned facts to him ; he 
stands fronting the worlds and the eternities upon it : to 
doubt of it is not permissable at all ! He must verify 
or expel his doubts, convert them into certainty of Yes 
or No ; or they will be the death of his religion. — But, 
on the other hand, convert them into certainty of Yes 
arid No ; or even of Yes tJioiigh No, as the Ignatian 
method is, what will become of your religion ? —L. D. 

P. VIII. 

CREEDS. 
What is incredible to thee, thou shalt not, at thy 
soul's peril, attempt to believe ! Go to Perdition if 
thou must, — but not with a lie in thy mouth. —St. ii. 2. 

WORSHIP. 
And yet there is, at worst, one Liturgy which does re- 
main forever unexceptionable : that of Praying (as the 
old Monks did withal) by Working. And indeed the 
Prayer which accomplished itself in special chapels at 
stated hours, and went not with a man, rising up from 
all his Work and Action, at all moments sanctifying the 
same, — what was it ever good for? 'Work is Worship': 
yes, in a highly considerable sense, — which, in the 
present state of all 'worship,' who is there that can un- 
fold! He that understands it well, understands the 
Prophecy of the whole Future ;- the last Esangel, which 
has included all others. Its cathedral the Dome of 
Immensity, — hast thou seen it ? coped with the star- 



272 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



galaxies; paved with the green mosaic of land and 
ocean ; and for altar, verily, the Star-throne of the 
Eternal ! Its litany and psalmody the noble acts, the 
heroic work and suffering, and true heart-utterance of 
all the Valiant of the Sons of Men. Its choir-music 
the ancient Winds and Oceans, and deep-toned, inartic- 
ulate, but most speaking voices of Destiny and His- 
tory, — supernal ever as of old. Between two great 
Silences : 

'Stars silent rest o'er us, 

Graves under us silent.' — P. &' P. III. 15. 

For the rest, let that vain struggle to read the mys- 
tery of the Infinite cease to harass us. It is a mystery 
which, through all ages, we shall only read here a line 
of, there another line of Do we not already know 
that the name of the Infinite is GoOD,is GOD ? Here 
on Earth we are as Soldiers, fighting in a foreign land ; 
that understand not the plan of the campaign, and 
have no need to understand it ; seeing well what is at 
our hand to be done. Let us do it like Soldiers, with 
submission, with courage, with a heroic joy. 'Whatso- 
ever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might.* 
Behind us, behind each one of us, lie Six Thousand 
Years of human effort, human conquest: before us is 
the boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and un- 
conquer^d Continents and Eldorados, which we, even 
we, have to conquer, to create; and from the bosom of 
Eternity there shine for us celestial guiding stars. 

' My inheritance how wide and fair ! 
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir.' 

— M. Characteristics. 



V. 

POLITICS 



POLITICS. 



EIGHTEElSf HUNDRED FORTY-EIGHT. 

Not long ago, the world saw, with thoughtless joy 
which might have been very thoughtful joy, a real mir- 
acle not heretofore considered possible or conceivable 
in the world, — a Reforming Pope. A simple pious 
creature, a good country-priest, invested unexpectedly 
with the tiara, takes up the New Testament, declares 
that this henceforth shall be his rule of governing. No 
more finesse, chicanery, hypocrisy, or false or foul 
dealing of any kind : God's truth shall be spoken, God'.s 
justice shall be done, on the throne called of St. Peter : 
an honest Pope, Papa, or P'ather of Christendom, shall 
preside there. And such a throne of St. Peter ; and 
such a Christendom, for an honest Papa to preside in ! 
The European populations everywhere hailed the omen; 
with shouting and rejoicing, leading-articles and tar- 
barrels ; thinking people listened with astonishment, — 
not with sorrow if they were faithful or wise ; with awe 
rather as at the heralding of death, and with a joy as 
of victory beyond death ! Something pious, grand and 
as if awful in that joy, revealing once more the Presence 
of a Divine Justice in this world. For, to such men it 
was very clear how this poor devoted Pope would pros- 
per, with his New Testament in his hand. An alarm- 

275 



2/6 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



ing business, that of governing in the throne of St 
Peter by the rule of veracity ! By the rule of veracity, 
the so-called throne of St. Peter was openly declared, 
above three hundred years ago, to be a falsity, a huge 
mistake, a pestilent dead carcass, which this Sun was 
weary of More than three hundred years ago, the throne 
of St. Peter received peremptory judicial notice to quit; 
authentic order, registered in Heaven's chancery and 
since legible in the hearts of all brave men, to take it- 
self away, — to begone, and let us have no more to do 
with it and its delusions and impious deliriums; — and it 
has been sitting every day since, it may depend upon 
it, at its own peril withal, and will have to pay exact 
damages yet for every day it has so sat. Law of verac- 
ity ? What this Popedom had to do by the law of ve- 
racity, was to give-up its own foul galvanic life, an of- 
fence to gods and men ; honestly to die, and get itself 
buried ! 

Far from this was the thing the poor Pope undertook 
in regard to it ; — and yet, on the whole, it was essen- 
tially this too. "Reforming Pope?" said one of our 
acquaintance, often in those weeks, "Was there ever 
such a miracle ? About to break-up that huge impos- 
thume too, by 'curing' it? Turgot and Necker were 
nothing to this. God is great ; and when a scandal is 
to end, brings some devoted man to take charge of it in 
hope, not in despair ! " — But cannot he reform ? asked 
many simple persons — and to whom our friend in grim 
banter would reply: "Reform a Popedom, — hardly. 
A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to bottom, and 
consisting mainly now of foul grime and rust : stop the 
holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with 
temporary putty, it may hang-together yet a while ; 
begin to hammer at it, solder at it, to what you call 
mend and rectify it, — it will fall to shreds, as sure as 
rust is rust ; go all into nameless dissolution, — and the 
fat in the fire will be a thing worth looking at, poor 



POLITICS. 277 

Pope!" So accordingly it has proved. The poor 

Pope, amid felicitations and tar-barrels of various kinds, 
went on joyfully for a season : but he had awakened, 
he as no other man could do, the sleeping elements ; 
mothers of the whirlwinds, conflagrations, earthquakes. 
Questions not very soluble at present, were even sages 
and heroes set to solve them, began everywhere with 
new emphasis to be asked. Questions which all official 
men wished, and almost hoped, to postpone till Dooms- 
day. Doomsday itself had come ; that was the terrible 
truth ! — 

For, sure enough, if once the la\v of veracity be ac- 
knowledged as the rule for human things, there will not 
anywhere be want of work for the reformer ; in very 
few places do human things adhere quite closely to 
that law! Here was the Papa of Christendom proclaim- 
ing that such was actually the case ; — whereupon all 
over Christendom such results as we have seen. The 
Sicilians, I think, were the first notable body that set- 
about applying this new strange rule sanctioned by the 
general Father; they said to themselves. We do not by the 
law of veracity belong to Naples and these Neapolitan 
Officials ; we will, by favour of Heaven and the Pope, 
be free of these. Fighting ensued ; insurrection, 
fiercely maintained in the Sicilian Cities ; with much 
bloodshed, much tumult and loud noise, vociferation 
extending through all newspapers and countries. The 
effect of this, carried abroad by newspapers and rumour, 
was great in all places ; greatest perhaps in Paris, which 
for sixty years past has been the City of Insurrection. 
The French People had plumed themselves on being, 
whatever else they were not, at least the chosen 'soldiers 
of liberty,' who took the lead of all creatures in that 
pursuit, at least ; and had become, as their orators, ed- 
itors and literateurs diligently taught them, a People 
whose bayonets were sacred, a kind of Messiah People, 
saving a blind world in its own despite, and earning for 



278 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



themselves a terrestrial and even celestial glory very 
considerable indeed. And here were the wretched 
downtrodden populations of Sicily risen to rival them, 
and threatening to take the trade out of their hand. 

No doubt of it, this hearing continually of the very 
Pope's glory as a Reformer, of the very Sicilians fight- 
ing divinely for liberty behind barricades, — must have 
bitterly aggravated the feeling of every Frenchman, as 
he looked around him, at home, on a Louis-Phillipism 
which had become the scorn of all the world. ' Icha- 
bod; is the glory departing from us? Under the sun 
is nothing baser, by all accounts and evidences, than 
the system of repression and corruption, of shameless 
dishonesty and unbelief in anything but human base- 
ness, that we now live under. The Italians, the very 
Pope, have become apostles of liberty, and France is 
what is France!" — We know what France sud- 
denly became in the end of February next ; and by a 
clear enough genealogy, we can trace a considerable 
share in that event to the good simple Pope with the 
New Testament in his hand. An outbreak, or at least 
a radical change and even inversion of affairs hardly to 
be achieved without an outbreak, everybody felt was 
inevitable in France : but it had been universally ex- 
pected that France would as usual take the initiative in 
that matter ; and had there been no reforming Pope, no 
insurrectionary Sicily, France had certainly not broken- 
out then and so, but only afterwards and otherwise. 
The French explosion, not anticipated by the cunningest 
men there on the spot scrutinising it, burst-up unlimited, 
complete, defying computation or control. 

Close following which, as if by sympathetic subterra- 
nean electricities, all Europe exploded, boundless, un- 
controllable ; and we had the year 1 848, one of the 
most singular, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole, 
humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not 
since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there 



POLITICS. 



279 



been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy 
rose monstrous, loud, blatent, inarticulate as the voice 
of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was 
scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane ; — Enter, 
all the world, see what kind of Official holy it is. 
Kings everywhere, and reigning persons, stared in sud- 
den horror, the voice of the whole world bellowing in 
their ear, "Begone, ye imbecile hypocrites, histrios not 
heroes! Off with you, off!" — and, what was peculiar 
and notable in this year for the first time, the Kings all 
made haste to go, as if exclaiming, "We are poor his- 
trios, we sure enough ; — did you want heroes ? Don't 
kill us; we couldn't help it!" Not one of them turned 
round, and stood upon his Kingship, as upon a right he 
could afford to die for, or to risk his skin upon ; by no 
manner of means. That, I say, is the alarming pecu- 
liarity at present. Democracy, on this new occasion, 
finds all Kings conscious that they are but Playactors. 
The miserable mortals, enacting their High Life Below 
Stairs, with faith only that this Universe may perhaps 
be all a phantasm and hypocrisis, — the truculent Consta- 
ble of the Destinies suddenly enters : "Scandalous Phan- 
tasms, what diO you here? Are 'solemnly constituted Im- 
postors' the proper Kings of men? Did you think the 
Life of Man was a grimacing dance of apes ? To be 
led always by the squeak of your paltry fiddle ? Ye 
miserable, this Universe is not an upholstery Puppet- 
play, but a terrible God's Fact ; and you, I think, — had 
not you better begone ! " They fled precipitately, some 
of them with what we may call an exquisite ignominy, 
— in terror of the treadmill or worse. And everywhere 
the people, or the populace, take their own government 
upon themselves; and open 'kinglessness,' what we call 
ajiarchy, — how happy if it be anarchy plus a street- 
constable ! — is everywhere the order of the day. Such 
was the history, from Baltic to Mediterranean, in Italy, 
France, Prussia, Austria, from end to end of Europe, in 



28o THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

those March days of 1848. Since the destruction of 
the old Roman Empire by inroad of the Northern Bar- 
barians, I have known nothing similar. —L. D. P. I. 

DEMOCRACY IN 1848. 

High shouts of exultation, in every dialect, by every 
vehicle of speech and writing, rise from far and near 
over this last avatar of Democracy in 1 848 : and yet, 
to wise minds, the first aspect it presents seems rather 
to be one of boundless misery and sorrow. What can 
be more miserable than this universal hunting-out of 
the high dignitaries, solemn functionaries, and potent, 
grave and reverend seigniors of the world ; this stormful 
rising-up of the inarticulate dumb masses everywhere, 
against those who pretended to be speaking for them 
and guiding them ? These guides, then, were mere 
blind men only pretending to see ? These rulers were 
not ruling at all ; they had merely got-on the attributes 
and clothes of rulers, and were surreptitiously drawing 
the wages, while the work remained undone ? The 
Kings were Sham- Kings, playacting as at Drury Lane ; 
— and what were the people withal that took them for 
real ? 

It is probably the hugest disclosure oi falsity in human 
things that was ever at one time made. These reverend 
Dignitaries that sat amid their far-shining symbols and 
long-sounding long-admitted professions, were mere Im- 
postors, then ? Not a true thing they were doing, but a 
false thing. The story they told men was a cunningly- 
devised fable; the gospels they preached to them were not 
an account of man's real position in this world, but an 
incoherent fabrication, of dead ghosts and unborn shad- 
ows, of traditions, cants, indolences, cowardices, — a falsity 
of falsities, which at last ceases to stick together. Wilful- 
ly and against their will, these high units of mankind were 
cheats, then ; and the low millions who believed in them 
were dupes, — a kind of inverse cheats, too, or they 



POLITICS. 281 

would not have believed in them so long ^ universal 
Bankruptcy of Imposture; that may be the brief deh- 
nition of it. Imposture everywhere declared once more 
to be contrary to Nature; nobody will change its word 
into an act any farther :— fallen insolvent; unable to 
keep its head up by these false pretences, or make its 
pot boil any more for the present ! A miore scandalous 
phenomenon, wide as Europe, never afflicted the face 
of the sun. Bankruptcy everywhere ; foul ignominy, 
and the abomination of desolation, in all high plfces: 
odious to look upon, as the carnage of a battle-field on 
the morrow morning;— a massacre not of the inno- 
cents- we cannot call it a massacre of the innocents; 
but a universal tumbling of Impostors and of Impos- 
tures into the street ! — r , t-i 

Such a spectacle, can we call it joyful ? Ihere is a 
joy in it, to the wise man too ; yes, but a joy full ot 
awe and as it were sadder than any sorrow,— like the 
vision of immortality, unattainable except through 
death and the grave ! And yet who would not, in his 
heart of hearts, feel piously thankful that Imposture has 
fallen bankrupt? By all means let it fall bankrupt; in 
the name of God let it do so, with whatever misery to 
itself and to all of us. Imposture, be it known then,— 
known it must and shall be,— is hateful, unendurable to 
God and man. Let it understand this everywhere ; and 
swifdy make ready for departure, wherever it yet lingers; 
and let it learn never to return, if possible ! The eter- 
nal voices, very audibly again, are speaking to proclaim 
this message, from side to side of the world. Not a 
very cheering message, but a very indispensable one. 
—z. D. P. I. 

REPUBLICS. 

Historically speaking, I believe there was no Nation 
that could subsist upon Democracy. Of ancient Re- 
publics, and Dernoi and Populi, we have heard much ; 
but it is now pretty well admitted to be nothing to our 



282 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

purpose; — a universal-suffrage republic, or a general- 
suffrage one, or any but a most-limited-suffrage one, 
never came to light, or dreamed of doing so, in ancient 
times. When the mass of the population were slaves, 
and the voters intrinsically a kind of kings, or men born 
to rule others; when the voters were real 'aristocrats' 
and manageable dependents of such, — then doubtless 
voting, and confused jumbling of talk and intrigue, 
might, without immediate destruction, or the need of a 
Cavaignac to intervene with cannon and sweep the 
streets clear of it, go on ; and beautiful developments of 
manhood might be possible beside it, for a season. • Be- 
side it ; or even, if you will, by means of it, and in vir- 
tue of it, though that is by no means so certain as is 
often supposed. Alas, no : the reflective constitutional 
mind has misgivings as to the origin of old Greek and 
Roman nobleness ; and indeed knows not how this or 
any other human nobleness could well be 'originated,' 
or brought to pass, by voting or without voting, in this 
world, except by the grace of God very mainly ; — and 
remembers, with a sigh, that of the Seven Sages them- 
selves no fewer than three were bits of Despotic Kings, 
Tvpavvoi, 'Tyrants' so-called (such being greatly 
wanted there) ; and that the other four were very far 
from Red Republicans, if of any political faith whatever ! 
We may quit the Ancient Classical concern, and leave 
it to College-clubs and speculative debating societies, in 
these late days. 

Of the various French Republics that have been tried, 
or that are still on trial, — of these also it is not needful 
to say any word. But there is one modern instance of 
Democracy nearly perfect, the Republic of the United 
States, which has actually subsisted for threescore years 
or more, with immense success as is afifirmed ; to which 
many still appeal, as to a sign of hope for all nations, 
and a 'Model Republic' Is not America an instance 
in point ? Why should not all Nations subsist and 
flourish on Democracy, as America does ? 



POLITICS. 



283 



Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and 
me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to 
speak tnipat^Hotically if any of us even felt so. Sure 
enough, America is a great, and in many respects a 
blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these 
hardy millions of Anglo-saxon men prove themselves 
worthy of their genealogy ; and, with the axe and 
plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind 
of implements, are triumphantly clearing-out wide 
spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of man- 
kind, arenas for the future history of the world ; doing, 
in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering 
feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a 
model anything, the wise among themselves know too 
well that there is nothing to be said. Nay the title 
hitherto to be a Commonwealth or Nation at all, among 
the 'k'^vi'i of the world, is, strictly considered, still a thing 
they are but striving for, and indeed have not yet done 
much towards attaining. Their Constitution, such as 
it may be, was made here, not there ; went over with 
them from the Old-Puritan English workshop ready- 
made. Deduct what they carried with them from En- 
gland ready-made, — their common English Language, 
and that same Constitution, or rather elixir of constitu- 
tions, their inveterate and now, as it were, inborn rev- 
erence for the Constable's Staff; two quite immense 
attainments, which England had to spend much blood, 
and valiant sweat of brow and brain, for centuries long, 
in achieving ; — and what new elements of polity or 
nationhood, what noble new phases of human arrange- 
ment, or social device worthy of Prometheus or of Epi- 
metheus, yet comes to light in America ? Cotton-crops 
and Indian-corn and dollars come to light; and half a 
world of untilled land, where populations that respect 
the constable can live, for the present without Govern- 
ment : this comes to light ; and the profound sorrow of 
all nobler hearts, here uttering itself as silent patient im- 



284 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



speakable ennui, there coming out as vague elegiac 
wailings, that there is still next to nothing more. 
'Anarchy phis a street- constable:' that also is anarchic 
to me, and other than quite lovely ! 

I foresee, too, that, long before the waste lands are 
full, the very street-constable, on these poor terms, will 
have become impossible ; without the waste lands, as 
here in our Europe, I do not see how he could continue 
possible many weeks. Cease to brag to me of Ameri- 
ca, and its model institutions and constitutions. To men 
in their sleep there is nothing granted in this world : 
nothing, or as good as nothing, to men that sit idly cmt,- 
cusing and ballot-boxing on the graves of their heroic 
ancestors, saying, "It is well, it is well!" .Corn and 
bacon are granted : not a very sublime boon, on such 
conditions ; a boon moreover which, on such conditions, 
cannot last ! No : America too wall have to strain its 
energies, in quite other fashion than this ; to crack its 
sinews, and ail-but break its heart, as the rest of us have 
had to do, in thousandfold wrestle with the Pythons and 
mud-demons, before it can become a habitation for the 
gods. America's battle is yet to fight ; and we, sorrow- 
ful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for 
it. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them ; enormous 
Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom 
huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on Amer- 
ica; and she will have her own agony, and her own 
victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware 
of Hitherto she but ploughs and hammers, in a very 
successful manner; hitherto, in spite of her 'roast- goose 
and apple-sauce,' she is not much. 'Roast-goose v/ith 
apple-sauce for the poorest working-man :' well, surely 
that is something, — thanks to your respect for the 
street-constable, and to your continents of fertile waste 
land ; — ^but that, even if it could continue, is by no 
means enough ; that is not even an instalment towards 
what will be required of you. My friend, brag not yet 



POLITICS. 285 

of our American cousins ! Their quantity of cotton, 
dollars, industry and resources, I believe to be almost 
unspeakable ; but I can by no means worship the like 
of these. What great human soul, what great thought, 
what great noble thing that one could worship, or loy- 
ally admire, has yet been produced there ? None : the 
American cousins have yet done none of these things. 
"What they have done ?" growls Smelfungus, tired of 
the subject : " They have doubled their population 
every twenty years. They have begotten, with a ra- 
pidity beyond recorded example. Eighteen Millions of 
the greatest bores ever seen in this world before, — that 
hitherto is their feat in History!" — And so we leave 
them, for the present ; and cannot predict the success of 
Democracy, on this side of the Atlantic, from their ex- 
ample. —L. D. P. I. 

GOVERNING. 

I SAY, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be 
governed by the wise ; to be guided in the right path 
by those who know it better than they. This is the 
first 'right of man;' compared with which all other 
rights are as nothing, — mere superfluities, corollaries 
which will follow of their own accord out of this ; if 
they be not contradictions to this, and less than nothing! 
To the wise it is not a privilege ; far other indeed. 
Doubtless, as bringing preservation to their country, it 
implies preservation of themselves withal ; but intrinsic- 
ally it is the harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed 
wise, has laid to his hand. A duty which he would 
fain enough shirk ; which accordingly, in these sad times 
of doubt and cowardly sloth, he has long everywhere 
been endeavouring to reduce to its minimum, and has in 
fact in most cases nearly escaped altogether. 

Who would govern that can get along without gov- 
erning ? He that is fittest for it, is 6f all men the un- 
willingest unless constrained. By multifarious devices 



286 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

we have been endeavouring to dispense with govern- 
ing ; and by very superficial speculations, of laissez- 
faire, supply-and-demand, &c. &c. to persuade our- 
selves that it is best so. The Real Captain, unless it be 
some Captain of mechanical Industry hired by Mammon, 
where is he in these days? Most likely, in silence, in 
sad isolation somewhere, in remote obscurity ; trying if, 
in an evil ungoverned time, he cannot at least govern 
himself The Real Captain undiscoverable ; the Phan- 
tasm Captain everywhere very conspicuous. — L. D. P. I. 

GOVERNORS. 
Tell me what kind of man governs a People, you tell 
me, with much exactness, what the net sum-total of 
social worth in that People has for some time been. 
— z. D. P. in. 

HOW DO MEN RISE IN YOUR SOCIETY? 

In fact this question always rises as the alpha and omega 
of social questions, What methods the Society has of 
summoning aloft into the high places, for its help and 
governance, the wisdom that is born to it in all places, 
and of course is born chiefly in the more populous or 
lower places ? P'or this, if you will consider it, expresses 
the ultimate available result, and net sum-total, of all 
the efforts, struggles and confused activities that go on 
in the Society ; and determines whether they are true 
and wise efforts, certain to be victorious, or false and 
foolish, certain to be futile, and to fall captive and caitiff. 
How do men rise in your Society ? In all Societies, 
Turkey included, and I suppose Dahomey included, 
men do rise ; but the question of questions always is. 
What kind of men ? Men of noble gifts, or men of 
ignoble ? It is the one or the other ; and a life-and- 
death inquiry which ! For in all places and all times, 
little as you may heed it. Nature most silently but most 
inexorably demands that it be the one and not the 
other. And you need not try to palm an ignoble sham 



POLITICS. 



287 



upon her, and call it noble ; for she is a judge. And 
her penalties, as quiet as she looks, are terrible; amount- 
ing to world-earthquakes, to anarchy and death ever- 
lasting; and admit of no appeal ! —L. D. P. v. 

TALENT. 

I CONSIDER that every Government convicts itself of 
infatuation and futility, or absolves and justifies itself 
before God and man, according as it answers this ques- 
tion. With all sublunary entities, this is the question 
of questions. What talent is born to you "^ How do 
you employ that? The crop of spiritual talent that is 
born to you, of human nobleness and intellect and he- 
roic faculty, this is infinitely more important than your 
crops of cotton or corn, or wine or herrings or whale- 
oil, which the Newspapers record with such anxiety 
every season. This is not quite counted by seasons, 
therefore the Newspapers are silent : but by generations 
and centuries, I assure you it becomes amazingly sen- 
sible ; and surpasses, as Heaven does Earth, all the corn 
and wine, and whale-oil and California bullion, or any 
other crop you grow. If that crop cease, the other 
crops — please to take them also, if you are anxious 
about them. That once ceasing, we may shut shop ; 
for no- other crop whatever will stay with us, nor is 
worth having if it would. — Z. D. P. IV. 

BAD GOVERNMENT. 

To be governed by small men is not only a misfortune, 
but it is a curse and a sin ; the effect, and alas the 
cause also, of all manner of curses and sins. To pro- 
fess subjection to phantasms, and pretend to accept 
guidance from fractional parts of tailors, is what Smel- 
fungus in his rude dialect calls it, "a damned lie,'' and 
nothing other. A He which, by long use and wont, we 
have grown accustomed to, and do not the least feel to 
be a lie, having spoken and done it continually every- 
where for such a long time past ; — but has Nature grown 



288 'THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

to accept it as a veracity, think you, my friend ? Have 
the Parcae fallen asleep, because you wanted to make 
money in the City ? Nature at all moments knows well 
that it is a lie : and that, like all lies, it is cursed and 
damned from the beginning. — Z. D. P. iv. 

vox POPULL 

Did you never hear, with the mind's ear as well, that 
fateful Hebrew Prophecy, I think the fatefulest of all, 
which sounds daily through the streets, "Ou' clo' ! Ou' 
clo ' ! " — A certain People, once upon a time, clamor- 
ously voted by overwhelming majority, "Not he; Ba- 
rabbas, not he ! Him, and what he is, and what he 
deserves, we know well enough : a reviler of the Chief 
Priests and sacred Chancery wigs ; a seditious Heretic, 
physical-force Chartist, and enemy of his country and 
mankind : To the gallows and the cross with him ! 
Barabbas is our man; Barabbas, we are for Barabbas!" 
They got Barabbas : — have you well considered what 
a fund of purblind obduracy, o( op3.que^uH/^jis>/i grown 
truculent and transcendent ; what an eye for the phy- 
lacteries, and want of eye for the eternal noblenesses ; 
sordid loyalty to the prosperous Semblances, and high- 
treason against the Supreme Fact, such a vote betokens 
in these natures ? For it was the consummation of a 
long series of such ; they and their father had long kept 
voting so. A singular People ; who could both pro- 
duce such divine men, and then could so stone and cru- 
cify them ; a People terrible from the beginning ! — Well, 
they got Barabbas ; and they got, of course, such guid- 
ance as Bar^ibbas and the like of him could give them ; 
and, of course, they stumbled ever downwards and 
devilwards, in their truculent stiffnecked way ; and — 
and, at this hour, after eighteen centuries of sad fortune, 
they prophetically sing " Ou' clo'!" in all the cities of 
the world. Might the world, at this late hour, but 
take note of them, and understand their song a little I 
— Z. £>. P. I. 



POLITICS. 



VOTING. 



289 



Voting, never was a divine Apollo, was once a hu- 
man Bottom the Weaver; and, so long as he continued 
in the same and sincere state, was worth consulting 
about several things. But alas, enveloped now in mere 
Btump-oratory, cecity, mutinous imbecility, and sin and 
misery, he is now an enchanted Weaver, — wooed by 
the fatuous Queen of constitutional Faery, — and feels 
his cheek hairy to the scratch. Beer rules him, and the 
Infinite of Balderdash ; and except as a horse might 
vote for tares or hard beans, he had better, till he grow 
wise again, hardly vote at all. —L. D. P. VI. 

PREMIER. 

But truly, in any time, what a strange feeling, enough 
to alarm a very big Lordship, this : that he, of the size 
he is, has got to the apex of English affairs ! Smallest 
wrens, we know, by training and the aid of machinery, 
are capable of many things. For this world abounds 
in miraculous combinations, far transcending anything 
they do at Drury Lane in the melodramatic way. A 
world which, as solid as it looks, is made all of aerial 
and even of spiritual stuff; permeated all by incalcula- 
ble sleeping forces and electricities; and liable to go off, 
at any time, into the hugest developments, upon a 
scratch thoughtfully or thoughtlessly given on the right 
point : — Nay, for every one of us, could not the sputter 
of a poor pistol-shot shrivel the Immensities together 
like a burnt scroll, and make the Heavens and the Earth 
pass away with a great noise ? Smallest wrens, and 
canary-birds of some dexterity, can be trained to handle 
lucifer-matches ; and have, before now, fired-off whole 
powder-magazines and parks of artillery. Perhaps 
without much astonishment to the canary-bird. The 
canary-bird can hold only its own quantity of astonish- 
ment ; and may possibly enough retain its presence of 
mind, were even Doomsday to come. It is on this 
19 



290 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



principle that I explain to myself the equanimity of 
some men and Premiers whom we have known. 

This and the other Premier seems to take it with per- 
fect coolness. And yet, I say, what a strange feeling, 
to find himself Chief Governor of Enc^land ; CTirdinfj on, 
upon his moderately-sized new soul, the old battle- 
harness of an Oliver Cromwell, an Edward Longshanks, 
a William Conqueror. "I, then, am the Ablest of En- 
glish attainable Men ? This English People, which has 
spread itself over all lands and seas, and achieved such 
works in the ages, — which has done America, India, 
the Lancashire Cotton-trade, Bromwicham Iron-trade, 
Newton's Principia, Shakspeare's Dramas, and the Brit- 
ish Constitution, — the apex of all its intelligences and 
mighty instincts and dumb longings : it is I ? William 
Conqueror's big gifts, and Edward's and Elizabeth's ; 
Oliver's lightning soul, noble as Sinai and the thunders 
of the Lord : these are mine, I begin to perceive, — to a 
certain extent. These heroisms have I, — though rather 
shy of exhibiting them. These ; and something withal 
of the huge beaver- faculty of our Arkwrights, Brindleys; 
touches too of the phoenix-melodies and sunny heroisms 
of our Shakspeares, of our Singers, Sages and inspired 
Thinkers ; all this is in me, I will hope, — though rather 
shy of exhibiting it on common occasions. The Pattern 
Englishman, raised by solemn acclamation upon the 
bucklers of the English People, and saluted with univer- 
sal ' God save thee ! ' — has now the honour to announce 
himself After fifteen hundred years of constitutional 
study as to methods of raising on the bucklers, which 
is the operation of operations, the English People, surely 
pretty well skilled in it by this time, has raised — the re- 
markable individual now addressing you. The best- 
combined sample of whatsoever divine qualities are in 
this big People, the consummate flower of all that they 
have done and been, the ultimate product of the Des- 
tinies, and English man of men, arrived at last in the 



POLITICS. 



291 



fulness of time, is — who think you ? Ye worlds, the 
Ithuriel javelin by which, with all these heroisms and 
accumulated energies old and new, the English People 
means to smite and pierce, is this poor tailor's-bodkin, 
hardly adequate to bore an eylet-hole, who now has the 

honour to" Good Heavens, if it were not that men 

generally are very much of the canary-bird, here are 
reflections sufficient to annihilate any man, almost be- 
fore starting ! 

But to us also it ought to be a very strange reflec- 
tion ! This, then, is the length we have brought it to, 
with our constitutioning, and ballot-boxing, and inces- 
sant talk and effort in every kind for so many centuries 
back ; this ? The golden flower of our grand alchem- 
ical projection, which has set the world in astonishment 
so long, and been the envy of surrounding nations, is — 
what we here see. To be governed by his Lordship, 
and guided through the undiscovered paths of Time by 
this respectable degree of human faculty. With our 
utmost soul's travail we could discover, by the sublimest 
methods eulogised by all the world, no abler English- 
man than this ? — 

Really it should make us pause upon the said sub- 
lime methods, and ask ourselves very seriously, whether, 
notwithstanding the eulogy of all the world, they can be 
other than extremely astonishing methods, that require 
revisal and reconsideration very much indeed ! For the 
kind of 'man' we get to govern us, all conclusions 
whatsoever centre there, and likewise all manner of is- 
sues flow infallibly therefrom. 'Ask well, who is your 
Chief Governor,' says one: 'for around him men like 
to him will infallibly gather, and by degrees all the 
world will be made in his image.' 'He who is himself 
a noble man, has a chance to know the nobleness of 
men ; he who is not, has none. And as for the poor 
Public, — alas, is not the kind of "man" you set upon it 
the liveliest symbol of its and your veracity and victory 



2g2 THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 

and blessedness, or unveracity and misery and cursed- 
ness ; the general summation and practical outcome of 
all else whatsoever in the Public and in you?' —L. Z>. 
F. III. 

BLOCKHEAD IN OFFICE. 

The mischief that one blockhead, that every blockhead 
does, in a world so feracious, teeming with endlesss re- 
sults as ours, no ciphering will sum up. The quack 
bootmaker is considerable ; as corn-cutters can testify, 
and desperate men reduced to buckskin and list-shoes. 
But the quack priest, quack high-priest, the quack king ! 
Why do not all just citizens rush, half-frantic, to stop 
him, as they would a conflagration? Surely a just citizen 
is admonished by God and his own Soul, by all silent 
and articulate voices of this Universe, to do what in him 
lies towards relief of this poor blockhead-quack, and of 
a world that groans under him. Run swiftly ; relieve 
him, — were it even by extinguishing him ! For all 
things have grown so old, tinder-dry, combustible; and 
he is more ruinous than conflagration. Sweep him 
down, at least ; keep him strictly within the hearth : he 
will then cease to be conflagration ; he will then become 
useful, more or less, as culinary fire. Fire is the best 
of servants : but what a master ! This poor blockhead 
too is born for uses : why elevating him to mastership, 
will you make a conflagration, a parish-curse or world- 
curse of him ? —P- &' P. II- 9- 

REFORM. 
'Pity,' exclaims Sauerteig once, 'that a nation cannot 
reform itself, as the English are now [1843] trying to 
dO) by what their newspapers call "tremendous cheers!" 
alas, it cannot be done. Reform is not joyous but 
grievous ; no single man can reform himself without 
stern sufi*ering and stern working; how much less can a 
nation of men. The serpent sheds not his old skin 
without rusty disconsolateness ; he is not happy but 



POLITICS. 



293 



miserable ! In the Water-cure itself, do you not sit 
steeped for months ; washed to the heart in elemental 
drenchings; and, like Job, are made to curse your day? 
Reforming of a nation is a terrible business ! Thus too, 
Medea, when she made men young again, was wont 
{du Hirnniell) to hew them in pieces with meat-axes; 
cast them into caldrons, and boil them for a length of 
time. How much handier could they but have done it 
by "tremendous cheers" alone ! ' — M. Dr.Fmncia. 

HELPS TO GOOD GOVERNMENT. 
Every man, and thou my present Reader canst do 
this : Be thyself a man abler to be governed ; more rev- 
erencing the divine faculty of governing, more sacredly 
detesting the diabolical semblance of said faculty in 
self and others; so shalt thou, if not govern, yet actually 
according to thy strength assist in real governing. And 
know always, and even lay to heart with a quite unu- 
sual solemnity, with a seriousness altogether of a relig- 
ious nature, that as 'Human Stupidity' is verily the ac- 
cursed parent of all this mischief, so Human Intelligence 
alone, to which and to which only its victory and bless- 
edness appointed here below, will or can cure it. If we 
knew this as devoutly as we ought to do, the evil, and 
all other evils were curable; — alas, if we had from of old 
known this, as all men made iji God's image ought to 
do, the evil never would have been ! Perhaps few Na- 
tions have ever known it less than we, for a good while 
back, have done. Hence these sorrows. —L. D. P. ill. 

REFORM BEGINS A T HOME. 
It has often been said, and must often be said again, 
that all Reform except a moral one will prove unavail- 
ing. Political Reform, pressingly enough wanted, can 
indeed root out the weeds (gross, deep-fixed, lazy dock- 
weeds, poisonous obscene hemlocks, ineffectual spurry 
in abundance); but it leaves the ground empty, — ready 
either for noble fruits, or for new worse tares! And how 



594 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



else is a Moral Reform to be looked for but in this way, 
that more and more Good Men are, by a bountiful 
Providence, sent hither to disseminate Goodness ; lib- 
erally to sow it, as in seeds shaken abroad by the living 
tree ? For such, in all ages and places, is the nature 
of a Good Man ; he is ever a mystic creative centre of 
Goodness : his influence if we consider it, is not to be 
measured; for his works do not die, but being of Eter- 
nity, are eternal ; and in new transformation, and ever- 
wider diffusion, endure, living and life-giving. Thou 
who exclaimest over the horrors and baseness of the 
Time, and how Diogenes would now need two lanterns 
in daylight, think of this : over the Time thou hast no 
power ; to redeem a World sunk in dishonesty has not 
been given thee : solely over one man therein thou 
hast a quite absolute uncontrollable power ; him re- 
deem, him make honest ; it will be something, it will 
be much, and thy life and labour not in vain. — M. Com- 

Laui Rhymes. 

FROM WITHIN OUTWARD. 

The Spiritual, it is still often said, but is not now suf- 
ficiently considered, is the parent and first-cause of the 
Practical. The Spiritual everywhere originates the 
Practical, models it, makes it : so that the saddest ex- 
ternal condition of affairs, among men, is but evidence 
of a still sadder internal one. For as thought is the 
life-fountain and motive-soul of action, so, in all regions 
of this human world, whatever outward thing offers it- 
self to the eye, is merely the garment or body of a thing 
which already existed invisibly within ; which, striving 
to give itself expression, has found, in the given circum- 
stances, that it could and would express itself — so. 
This is everywhere true; and in these times when riien's 
attention is directed outward rather, this deserves far 
more attention than it will receive. —L. D. P. Vlll. 



POLITICS. 



295 



CROMWELL'S STA TUE. 

Poor English Public, tfiey really are exceedingly be- 
wildered with Statues at present. They would fain do 
honour to somebody, if they did but know whom or 
how. Unfortunately they know neither whom nor 
how ; they are, at present, the farthest in the world 
from knowing ! They have raised a set of the ugliest 
Statues, and to the most extraordinary persons, ever 
seen under the sun before. Being myself questioned, 
in reference to the New Houses of Parliament some 
years ago, "Shall Cromwell have a Statue?" I had to 
answer, with sorrowful dubiety: "Cromwell? Side by 
side with a sacred Charles the Second, sacred George 
the Fourth, and the other sacred Charleses, Jameses, 
Georges, and Defenders of the Faith, — I am afraid he 
wouldn't like it ! Let us decide provisionally. No." 
—L. D. p. VII. 

PUBLIC STA TUES IN ENGLAND. 

What good in the aesthetic, the moral, social or any 
human point of view, we are ever to get of these 
Brazen Images now peopling our chief cities and their 
market-places, it is impossible to specify. Evil enough 
we, consciously or unconsciously, get of them ; no soul 
looks upon them approvingly or even indifferently 
without damage, all the deadlier the less he knows of 
it. Simple souls they corrupt in the sources of their 
spiritual being : wise souls, obliged to look on them, look 
with some feeling of anger and just abhorrence ; which 
is itself a mischief to a peaceable man. Good will never 
be got of these Brazen Images in their present form. Of 
what use, till once broken-up and melted into warming- 
pans, they can ever be to gods or men, I own I cannot 
see. Gods and men demand that this, which is their 
sure ultimate destiny, should so soon as possible be re- 
alised. —L. D. P. VIL 



296 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



If the world were not properly anarchic, this question 
'Who shall have a Statue?' would be one of the great- 
est and most solemn for it. Who is to have a Statue ? 
means, Whom shall we consecrate and set apart as one 
of our sacred men ? Sacred ; that all men may see 
him, be reminded of him, and, by new example added 
to old perpetual precept, be taught what is real worth 
in man. Whom do you wish us to resemble ? Him 
you set on a high column, that all men, looking on it, 
may be continually apprised of the duty you expect 
from them. What man to set there, and what man to 
refuse forevermore the leave to be set there : this, if a 
country were not anarchic as we say, — ruleless, given 
up to the rule of Chaos, in the primordial fibres of its 
being, — would be a great question for a country ! 

And to the parties themselves, lightly as they set 
about it, the question is rather great. Whom shall I 
honour, whom shall I refuse to honour ? If a man have 
any precious thing in him at all, certainly the most pre- 
cious of all the gifts he can offer is his approbation, his 
reverence to another man. This is his very soul, this 
fealty which he swears to another: his personality itself, 
with whatever it has of eternal and divine, he bends here 
in reverence before another. Not lightly will a man 
give this, — if he is still a man. — L. D. P. VIL 

MODERN PEERAGES, 

Till the time of James the First, I find that real heroic 
merit more or less was actually the origin of peerages ; 
never, till towards the end of that bad reign, were peer- 
ages bargained for, or bestowed on men palpably of no 
worth except their money or connexion. But the evil 
practice, once begun, spread rapidly; and now the 
Peerage-Book is what we see ; — a thing miraculous in 
the other extreme. A kind of Proteus' flock, very curi- 
ous to meet upon the lofty mountains, so many of them 
being natives of the deep ! — Our menagerie of live 



POLITICS. 



297 



Peers in Parliament is like that of our Brazen Statues 
in the market-place ; the selection seemingly is made 
much in the same way, and with the same degree of 
felicity, and successful accuracy in choice. Our one 
steady regulated supply is the class definable as Supreme 
Stump-Orators in the Lawyer department ; the class 
called Chancellors flows by something like fixed con- 
duits towards the Peerage ; the rest, like our Brazen 
Statues, come by popular rule-of-thumb. —L. D. P. VII. 

MODEL PRISONS. 

On the whole, what a beautiful Establishment here 
fitted-up for the accommodation of the scoundrel- world, 
male and female ! As I said, no Duke in England is, 
for all rational purposes which a human being can or 
ought to aim at, lodged, fed, tended, taken care of, with 
such perfection. Of poor craftsmen that pay rates and 
taxes from their day's wages, of the dim millions that 
toil and moil continually under the sun, we know what 
is the lodging and the tending. Of the Johnsons, Gold- 
smiths, lodged in their squalid garrets ; working often 
enough amid famine, darkness, tumult, dust and deso- 
lation, what work they have to do : — of these as of 
'spiritual backwoodsmen,' understood to be preappoint- 
ed to such a life, and like the pigs to killing, 'quite 
used to it,' I say nothing. But of Dukes, which Duke, 
I could ask, has cocoa, soup, meat, and food in general 
made ready, so fit for keeping him in health, in ability 
to do and to enjoy ? Which Duke has a house so 
thoroughly clean, pure and airy ; lives in an element so 
wholesome, and perfectly adapted to the uses of soul 
and body as this same, which is provided here for the 
Devil's regiments of the line ? No Duke that I have 
ever known. Dukes are waited-on by deleterious 
French cooks, by perfunctory grooms of the chambers, 
and expensive crowds of eye-servants, more imaginary 
than real : while here, Science, Human Intellect and 



298 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Beneficence have searched and sat studious, eager to do 
their very best ; they have chosen a real Artist in Gov- 
erning to see their best, in all details of it, done. 
Happy regiments of the line, what soldier to any 
earthly or celestial Power has such a lodging and at- 
tendance as you here ? No soldier or servant direct or 
indirect of God or of man, in this England at present. 
Joy to you, regiments of the line. Your Master, I am 
told, has his Elect, and professes to be ' Prince of the 
Kingdoms of this World; ' and truly I see he has power 
to do a good turn to those he loves, in England at least. 
Shall we say. May Jie, may the Devil give you good of 
it, ye Elect of Scoundrelism ? I will rather pass by, 
uttering no prayer at all ; musing rather in silence on 
the singular 'worship of God,' or practical 'reverence 
done to Human VVorth' (which is the outcome and 
essence of all real 'worship' whatsoever) among the 
posterity of Adam at this day. 

For all round this beautiful Establishment, or Oasis 
of Purity, intended for the Devil's regiments of the line, 
lay continents of dingy poor and dirty dwellings, where 
the unfortunate not yet enlisted into that Force were 
struggling manifoldly, — in their workshops, in their 
marble-yards and timber-yards and tan-yards, in their 
close cellars, cobbler-stalls, hungry garrets, and poor 
dark trade-shops with red-herrings and tobacco-pipes 
crossed in the window, — to keep the Devil out-of-doors, 
and not enlist with him. And it was by a tax on these 
that the Barracks for the regiments of the line were 
kept up. Visiting Magistrates, impelled by Exeter 
Hall, by Able- Editors, and the Philanthropic Move- 
ment of the Age, had given orders to that effect. 
Rates on the poor servant of God and of her Majesty, 
who still serves both in his way, painfully selling red- 
herrings; rates on him and his red-herrings to boil 
right soup for the Devil's declared Elect ! Never in 
my travels, in any age or clime, had I fallen-in with 



POLITICS. 299 

such Visiting Magistrates before. Reserved they, I 
should suppose, for these ultimate or penultimate ages 
of the world, rich in all prodigies, political, spiritual, — 
ao-es surely with such a length of ears as was never 
paralleled before. -L. D. P. Ii. 

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. 
And so you take criminal caitiiTs, murderers, and the 
like, and hang them on gibbets 'for an example to deter 
others.' Whereupon arise friends of humanity, and 
object With very great reason, as I consider, if your 
hypothesis be correct. What right have you to hang 
any poor creature 'for an example'? He can turn 
round upon you and say, "Why make an 'example' of 
me, a merely ill-situated, pitiable man ? Have you no 
more respect for misfortune ? Misfortune, I have been 
told, is sacred. And yet you hang me, now I am fall- 
en into your hands ; choke the life out of me, for an 
example ! Again I ask. Why make an example of me, 
for your own convenience alone ? " — All 'revenge' be- 
ing out of the question, it seems to me the caitiff is 
unanswerable ; and he and the philanthropic platforms 
have the logic all on their side. 

The one answer to him is: "Caitiff, we hate thee; 
and discern for some six thousand years now, that we 
are called upon by the whole Universe to do it. Not 
with a diabolic but with a divine hatred. God himself, 
we have always understood, 'hates sin,' with a most 
authentic, celestial, and eternal hatred. A hatred, a 
hostility inexorable, unappeasable, which blasts the 
scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately into black an- 
nihilation and disappearance from the sum of things. 
The path of it as the path of a flaming sword : he that 
has eyes may see it, walking inexorable, divinely beau- 
tiful and divinely terrible, through the chaotic gulf of 
Human History, and everywhere burning, as with un- 
quenchable fire, the false and death-worthy from the 



200 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

true and life- worthy; making all Human History, and 
the Biography of every man, a God's Cosmos in place 
of a Devil's Chaos. So is it, in the end ; even so, to 
every man who is a man, and not a mutinous beast, and 
has eyes to see. To thee, caitifif, these things were and 
are, quite incredible ; to us they are too awfully cer- 
tain, — the Eternal Law of this Universe, whether thou 
and others will believe it or disbelieve. We, not to 
be partakers in thy destructive adventure of defymg 
God and all the Universe, dare not allow thee to con- 
tinue longer among us. As a palpable deserter from 
the ranks where all men, at their eternal peril, are bound 
to be : palpable deserter, taken with the red hand fight- 
ing thus against the whole Universe and its Laws, we — 
send thee back into the whole Universe, solemnly expel 
thee from our community ; and will, in the name of 
God, not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow stern 
as thy own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so 
end." 

Other ground on which to deliberately slay a dis- 
armed fellow-man I can see none. Example, effects 
upon the public mind, effects upon this and upon that : 
all this is mere appendage and accident ; of all this I 
make no attempt to* keep account, — sensible that no 
arithmetic will or can keep account of it ; that its 
'effects,' on this hand and on that, transcend all calcula- 
tion. One thing, if I can calculate it, will include all, 
and produce beneficial effects beyond calculation, and 
no ill effect at all, anywhere or at any time : What the 
Law of the Universe, or Law of God, is with re- 
gard to this caitiff? That, by all sacred research and 
consideration, I will try to find out ; to that I will come 
as near as human means admit ; that shall be my ex- 
emplar and 'example;' all men shall through me see 
that, and be profited beyond calculation by seeing it. 
— Z. D. P. II. 



POLITICS. 



SENTIMENTAL BENEVOLENCE. 



301 



Of Beneficence, Benevolence, and the people that come 
together to talk on platforms and subscribe five pounds, 
I will say nothing here ; indeed there is not room here 
for the twentieth part of what were to be said of them. 
The beneficence, benevolence, and sublime virtue which 
issues in eloquent talk reported in the Newspapers, with 
the subscription of five pounds, and the feeling that one 
is a good citizen and ornament to society, — concerning 
this, there were a great many unexpected remarks to 
be made ; but let this one, for the present occasion, suf- 
fice: 

My sublime benevolent friends, don't you perceive, 
for one thing; that here is a shockingly unfruitful invest- 
ment for your capital of Benevolence ; precisely the 
worst, indeed, which human ingenuity could select for 
you? "Laws are unjust, temptations great," &c. &c. : 
alas, I know it, and mourn for it, and passionately call 
on all men to help in altering it. But according to 
every hypothesis as to the law, and the temptations and 
pressures towards vice, here are .the individuals who, of 
all the society, have yielded to said pressure. These 
are of the worst substance for enduring pressure ! The 
others yet stand and make resistance to temptation, to 
the law's injustice ; under all the perversities and strang- 
ling impediments there are, the rest of the society still 
keep their feet, and struggle forward, marching under 
the banner of Cosmos, of God and Human Virtue ; these 
select Few, as I explain to you, are they who have 
fallen to Chaos, and are sworn into certain regiments of 
the line. A superior proclivity to Chaos is declared in 
these, by the very fact of their being here ! Of all the 
•generation we live in, these are the worst stuff. These, 
I 'say, are the Elixir of the Infatuated among living 
mortals : if you want the worst investment for your Be- 
nevolence, here you accurately have it. O my surpris- 
ing friends ! Nowhere so as here can you be certain 



302 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



that a given quantity of wise teaching bestowed, of be- 
nevolent trouble taken, will yield zero, or the net mini- 
mum of return. It is sowing of your wheat upon Irish 
quagmires; laboriously harrowing it in upon the sand 
of the sea-shore. O my astonishing benevolent friends! 
Yonder in those dingy habitations, and shops of red- 
herring and tobacco-pipes, where men have not yet 
quite declared for the Devil ; there, I say, is land : here 
is mere sea-beach. Thither go with your benevolence, 
thither to those dingy caverns of the poor ; and there 
instruct and drill and manage, there where some fruit 
may come from it. — L. D. P. II. 

THE BENEVOLENT PLATFORM FEVER. 

Howard abated the Jail-fever; but it seems to me he 
has been the innocent cause of a far more distressing 
fever which rages high just now ; what we may call the 
Benevolent- Platform Fever. Howard is to be regarded 
as the unlucky fountain of that tumultuous frothy 
ocean-tide of benevolent sentimentality, 'abolition of 
punishment,' all-absorbing 'prison-discipline,' and gen- 
eral morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for 
scoundrels; which is threatening to drown human so- 
ciety as in deluges, and leave, instead of an 'edifice of 
society' fit for the habitation of men, a continent of fetid 
ooze inhabitable only by mud-gods and creatures that 
walk upon their belly. Few things more distress a 
thinking soul at this time. 

Most sick am I, O friends, of this sugary disastrous 
jargon of philanthropy, the reign of love, new era of 
universal brotherhood, and not Paradise to the Well- 
deserving but Paradise to All-and-sundry, which pos- 
sesses the benighted minds of men and women in our 
day. My friends, I think you are much mistaken about 
Paradise ! ' No Paradise for anybody : he that cannot 
do without Paradise, go his ways :' suppose you tried 
that for a while ! I reckon that the safer version. — Un- 



POLITICS. 



303 



happy sugary brethren, this is all untrue, this other ; 
contrary to the fact ; not a tatter of it will hang together 
in the wind and weather of fact. In brotherhood with 
the base and foolish I, for one, do not mean to live. 
Not in brotherhood with them was life hitherto worth 
much to me ; in pity, in hope not yet quite swallowed 
of disgust, — otherwise in enmity that must last through 
eternity, in unappeasable aversion shall I have to live 
with these ! Brotherhood ? No, be the thought far 
from me. They are Adam's children, — alas yes, I well 
remember that, and never shall forget it ; hence this 
rage and sorrow. But they have gone over to the drag- 
ons; they have quitted the Father's house, and set-up 
with the Old Serpent : till they return, how can they be 
brothers ? They are enemies, deadly to themselves and 
to me and to you, till then ; till then, while hope yet 
lasts, I will treat them as brothers fallen insane ; — when 
hope has ended, with tears grown sacred and wrath 
grown sacred, I will cut them off in the name of God ! 
It is at my peril if I do not. With the servant of Satan 
I dare not continue in partnership. Him I must put 
away, resolutely and forever; 'lest,' as it is written, 'I 
become partaker of his plagues.' —L. D. p. Ji. 

FALSE BENEVOLENCE. 

On the whole, what a reflection is it that we cannot 
bestow on an unworthy man any particle of our benev- 
olence, our patronage, or whatever resource is ours, — 
without withdrawing it, it and all that will grow of it, 
from one worthy, to whom it of right belongs ! We 
cannot, I say ; impossible ; it is the eternal law of 
things. Incompetent Duncan M'Pastchorn, the hapless 
incompetent mortal to whom I give the cobbling of my 
boots, — and cannot find in my heart to refuse it, the 
poor drunken wretch having a wife and ten children ; 
he withdraivs the job from sober, plainly competent, 
and meritorious Mr. Sparrowbill, generally short of 



304 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Work too ; discourages Sparrowbill ; teaches him that 
he too may as well drink and Toiter and bungle ; that 
this is not a scene for merit and demerit at all, but for 
dupery, and whining flattery, and incompetent cobbling 
of every description ; — clearly tending to the ruin of 
poof Sparrowbill ! What harm had Sparrowbill done 
me that I should so help to ruin him ? And I couldn't 
save the insalvable M'Pastehorn ; I merely yielded him, 
for insufficient work, here and there a half-crown, — 
which he oftenest drank. And now Sparrowbill also is 
drinking ! 

Justice, Justice : woe betides us everywhere when, for 
this reason or for that, we fail to do justice ! No be- 
neficence, benevolence, or other virtuous contribution 
will make good the want. And in what a rate of ter- 
rible geometrical progression, far beyond our poor com- 
putation, any act of Injustice once done by us grows ; 
rooting itself ever anew, spreading ever anew, like a 
banyan-tree, — blasting all life under it, for it is a poison- 
tree ! There is but one thing needed for the world ; 
but that one is indispensable. Justice, Justice, in the 
name of Heaven ; give us Justice, and we live ; give us 
only counterfeits of it, or succedanea for it, and we die ! 
— Z. D. P. II. 

THE DANGER. 

Philanthropy, emancipation, and pity for human 
calamity is very beautiful ; but the deep oblivion of the 
Law of Right and Wrong; this 'indiscriminate mash- 
ing-up of Right and Wrong into a patent treacle' of 
the Philanthropic movement, is by no means beautiful ; 
this, on the contrary, is altogether ugly and alarming. 

Neglect to treat even your declared scoundrel as 
scoundrel, this is the last consummation of the process, 
the drop by which the cup runs over ; the penalties of 
this, most alarming, extensive, and such as you little 
dream of, will straightway very rapidly come. Dim 
obHvion of Right and Wrong, among the masses of 



POLITICS. 



305 



your population, will come; doubts as to Right and 
Wrong, indistinct notion that Right and Wrong are not 
eternal, but accidental, and settled by uncertain votings 
and talkings, will come. Prurient influenza of Platform 
Benevolence, and * Paradise to AU-and-sundry,' will 
come. In the general putrescence of your 'religions,' 
as you call them, a strange new religion, named of 
Universal Love, with Sacraments mainly of Divorce, 
with Balzac, Sue and Company for Evangelists, and 
Madame Sand for Virgin, will come, — and results fast 
following therefrom which will astonish you very much. 
— Z. D. P. II. 

WAR. 
What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net- 
purport and upshot of war ? To my own knowledge, 
for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village 
of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. 
From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the 
French, there are successively selected, during the 
French war, say thirty able-bodied men : Dumdrudge, 
at her own expense, has suckled aiid nursed them : she 
has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to 
manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one 
can weave, another build, another hammer, and the 
weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. 
Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they 
are selected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at 
the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say 
only to the South of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 
And now to that same spot in the South of Spain, are 
thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum- 
drudge, in like manner wending: till at length, after 
infinite efibrt, the two parties come into actual juxtaposi- 
tion; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun 
in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given: 
and they blow the souls out of one another ; and in 
place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has 
20 



3o6 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and anew 
shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as 
the Devil is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough 
apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a 
Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, 
some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? 
Simpleton ! their Governors had fallen-out ; and, in- 
stead of shooting one another, had the cunning to 
make these poor blockheads shoot. — Alas, so is it in ' 
Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands ; still as of 
old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must 
pay the piper!" — In that fiction of the English Smollett, 
it is true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophet- 
ically shadowed forth ; where the two Natural Enemies, 
in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brim- 
stone; light the same and smoke in one another's faces, 
till the weaker gives-in : but from such predicted Peace- 
Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious cent- 
uries, may still divide us ! —S. R. II. 8. 

A NATION'S history'. 

A PARADOXICAL philosopher, carrying to the utter- 
most length that aphorism of Montesquieu's, "Happy 
the people whose annals are tiresome," has said, " Happy 
the people whose annals are vacant." In which saying, 
mad as it looks, may there not still be found some 
grain of reason ? For truly, as it has been written, 
"Silence is divine," and of Heaven; so in all earthly 
things too there is a silence which is better than any 
speech. Consider it well, the Event, the thing which 
can be spoken of and recorded, is it not, in all cases, 
some disruption, some solution of continuity ? Were it 
even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (of 
active Force) ; and so far, either in the past or in the 
present, is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest persever- 
ance were our blessedness ; not dislocation and altera- 
tion, — could they be avoided. 



POLITICS. 



307 



The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand 
years ; only in the thousandth year, when the woodman 
arrives with his axe, is there heard an echoing through 
the solitudes ; and the oak announces itself when, with 
far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the 
planting of the acorn ; scattered from the lap of some 
wandering wind ! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put 
on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of procla- 
mation could there be ? Hardly from the most obser- 
vant a word of recognition. These things befcl not, 
they were slowly done ; not in an hour, but through 
the flight of days : what was to be said of it ? This 
hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next 
would be. 

It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles 
not of what was done, but of what was misdone or un- 
done ; and foolish History (ever, more or less, the 
written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little 
that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions, 
Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty 
Years' Wars : mere sin and misery ; not work, but hin- 
drance of work! For the Earth, all this while, was 
yearly green and yellow with her kind harvests ; the 
hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker rested 
not : and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this 
so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning 
which, poor History may well ask, with wonder. 
Whence it came ? She knows so little of it, knows so 
much of what obstructed it, what would have rendered 
it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or fool- 
ish choice, is her rule and practice ; whereby that par- 
adox, "Happy the people whose annals are vacant," is 
not without its true side. —F. R.,P. I.,B. II. i. 

MODERN WARS. 

Of European wars I really hardly remember any, since 
Oliver Cromwell's last Protestant or Liberation war 



3o8 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



with Popish antichristian Spain some two hundred years 
ago, to which I for my own part could have contrib- 
uted my Hfe with any heartiness, or in fact would have 
subscribed money itself to any considerable amount. 
Dutch William, a man of some heroism, did indeed get 
into troubles with Louis Fourteenth ; and there rested 
till some shadow of Protestant Interest, and question 
of National and individual Independence, oVer those 
wide controversies ; a little money and human enthusi- 
asm was still due to Dutch William. Illustrious Chat- 
ham also, not to speak of his Manilla ransoms and the 
like, did one thing : assisted Fritz of Prussia, a brave 
man and king (almost the only sovereign King I have 
known since Cromwell's time) like to be borne down by 
ignoble men and sham-kings ; for this let illustrious 
Chatham too have a little money and human enthusi- 
asm, — a little, by no means much. But what am I to 
say of heavenborn Pitt the son of Chatham ? England 
sent forth her fleets and armies ; her money into every 
country ; money as if the heavenborn Chancellor had 
got a Fortunatus' purse ; as if this Island had become 
a volcanic fountain of gold, or new terrestrial sun capa- 
ble of radiating mere guineas. The result of all which, 
what was it ? Elderly men can remember the tar-bar- 
rels burnt for success and thrice-immortal victory in the 
business ; and yet what result 'had we ? The French 
Revolution, a Fact decreed in the Eternal Councils, 
could not be put down : the result was, that heavenborn 
Pitt had actually been fighting (as the old Hebrews 
would have said) against the Lord, — that the Laws of 
Nature were stronger than Pitt. Of whom therefore 
there remains chiefly his unaccountable radiation of 
guineas, for the gratitude of posterity. Thank you for 
nothing, — for eight hundred millions less than nothing ! 
— Z. D. P. IV. 

PARLIAMENTAR V DEB A TES. 
What is the good of men collected, with effort, to de- 
bate on the benches of St. Stephen's, now when there 



POLITICS. 



309 



is a Times Newspaper ? Not the discussion of ques- 
tions ; only the ultimate voting of them (a very brief 
process, I should think !) requires to go on, or can verita- 
bly go on in St. Stephen's now. The honourable gentle- 
man is oftenest very wearisome in St. Stephen's now ; his 
and his Constituency's Aye and No is all we want of the 
honourable gentleman there; all we are ever like to get of 
him there, — could it but be had without admixtures I If 
your Lordship will reflect on it, you will find it an 
obsolete function, this debating one of his ; useless in 
these new times, as a set of riding postboys would be 
along the line of the Great Western Railway. Loving 
my life, and time which is the stuff of life, I read no 
Parliamentary Debates, rarely any Parliamentary 
Speech; but I am told there is not, 'once in the seven 
years, the smallest gleam of new intelligence thrown on 
any matter, earthly or divine, by an honourable gentle- 
man on his legs in Parliament. Nothing offered you 
but wearisome, dreary, thrice-boiled colewort; — a bad 
article at first, and served and again served in News- 
papers and Periodical and other Literatures, till even 
the inferior animals would recoil from it. Honourable 
gentlemen have complained to myself that under the 
sky there was not such a bore. What is or can be the 
use of this, your Lordship ? 

Let an honourable gentleman who has colewort, or 
stump-oratory of that kind, send it direct to the Times; 
perhaps they will print it for him, and then all persons 
can read it there who hope instruction from it. If the 
Times refuse to print it, let the honourable gentleman, 
if still so minded, print it at his own expense ; let him 
advertise it at a penny the gross, distribute it gratis as 
handbill, or even offer a small reward per head to any 
citizen that will read it: but if, after all, no body of 
citizens will read it even for a reward, then let the hon- 
ourable gentleman retire into himself, and consider what 
such omens mean ! So much T take to be fair, or at 



3IO 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



least unavoidable in a free country : Let every creature 
try to get his opinion listened to ; and let honourable 
gentlemen who can print their own stump-oratory, and 
offer the public a reward for using it, by all means do 
so. But that, when no human being will incline or 
even consent to have their said oratory, they can get 
upon their legs in Parliament and pour it out still, to 
the burdening of many Newspapers, to the boring of 
their fellow- creatures, and generally to the despair of 
all thinking citizens in the community : this is and re- 
mains, I must crave to say, an infatuation, and, what- 
ever respectable old coat you put upon it, is fast grow- 
ing a nuisance which must be abated. — Z. D. P. VI. 

Truly, it is little known at. present, and ought forth- 
with to become better known, what ruin to all noble- 
ness and fruitfulness and blessedness in the genius of a 
poor mortal you generally bring about by ordering him 
to speak, to do all things with a view to their being 
seen ! Few good and fruitful things ever were done, or 
could be done, on those terms. Silence, silence ; and 
be distant ye profane, with your jargonings and super- 
ficial babblements, when a man has anything to do! 
Eye-service, — dost thou know what that is, poor En- 
gland ? — eye-service is all the man can do in these sad 
circumstances ; grows to be all he has the idea of doing, 
of his or any other man's ever doing, or ever having 
done, in any circumstances. Sad enough. Alas, it is 
our saddest woe of all ; — too sad for being spoken of at 
present, while all or nearly all men consider it an imag- 
inary sorrow on my part ! 

Let the young English soul, in whatever logic-shop 
and nonsense-verse establishment of an Eton, Oxford, 
Edinburgh, Halle, Salamanca, or other High Finishing- 
School, he may be getting his young idea taught how 
to speak and spout, and print sermons and review-arti- 
cles, and thereby show himself and fond patrons that it 



POLITICS. 



311 



is an idea, — lay this solemnly to heart ; this is my deep- 
est counsel to him ! The idea you have once spoken, 
if it even were an idea, is no longer yours ; it is gone 
from you, so much life and virtue is gone, and the vital 
circulations of your self and your destiny and activity 
are henceforth deprived of it. If you could not get it 
spoken, if you could still constrain it into silence, so 
much the richer are you. Better keep your idea while 
you can : let it still circulate in your blood, and there 
fructify ; inarticulately inciting you to good activities ; 
giving to your whole spiritual life a ruddier health. 
When the time does come for speaking it, you will 
speak it all the more concisely, the more expressively, 
appropriately ; and if such a time should never come, 
have you not already acted it, and uttered it as no 
words can ? Think of this, my young friend ; for there 
is nothing truer, nothing more forgotten in these shabby 
gold-laced days. Incontinence is half of all the sins of 
man. And among the many kinds of that base vice, I 
know none baser, or at present half so fell and fatal, as 
that same Incontinence of Tongue. 'Public speaking,' 
'parliamentary eloquence': it is a Moloch, before whom 
young souls are made to pass through the fire. They 
enter, weeping or rejoicing, fond parents consecrating 
them to the redhot Idol, as to the Highest God : and 
they come out spiritually dead. Dead enough ; to live 
thenceforth a galvanic life of mere Stump-Oratory; 
screeching and gibbering, words \Vithout wisdom, 
without veracity, without conviction more than skin- 
deep. A divine gift, that ? • It is a thing admired by 
the vulgar, and rewarded with seats in the Cabinet and 
other preciosities ; but to the wise, it is a thing not ad- 
mirable, not adorable ; unmelodious rather, and ghastly 
and bodeful, as the speech of sheeted spectres in the 
streets at midnight ! 

Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British 
man, thou that art now growing to be something : not a 



212 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Stump-Orator, if thou canst help it. Appeal not to the 
vulgar, with its long ears and its seats in the Cabinet ; 
not by spoken words to the vulgar ; hate the profane 
vulgar, and bid it begone. Appeal by silent work, by 
silent suffering if there be no work, to the gods, who 
have nobler than seats in the Cabinet for thee ! Talent 
for Literature, thou hast such a talent ? Believe it not, 
be slow to believe it ! To speak, or to write. Nature 
did not peremptorily order thee ; but to work she did. 
And know this : there never was a talent even for real 
Literature, not to speak of talents lost and damned in 
doing sham Literature, but was primarily a talent for 
something infinitely better of the silent kind. Of Lit- 
erature, in all ways, be shy rather than otherwise, at 
present ! There where thou art, work, work ; whatso- 
ever thy hand findeth to do, do it, — with the hand of a 
man, not of a phantasm ; be that thy unnoticed blessed- 
ness and exceeding great reward. Thy words, let them 
be few, and well-ordered. Love silence rather than 
speech in these tragic days, when, for very speaking, 
the voice of man has fallen inarticulate to man ; and 
hearts, in this loud babbling, sit dark and dumb towards 
one another. Witty, — above all, O be not witty : none 
of us is bound to be witty, under penalties ; to be wise 
and true we all are, under the terriblest penalties ! 

Brave young friend, dear to me, and known too in a 
sense, though never seen, nor to be seen by me, — you 
are, what I am not, in the happy case to learn to be 
something and to do something, instead of eloquently 
talking about what has been and was done and may be ! 
The old are what they are, and will not alter ; our hope 
is in you. England's hope, and the world's, is that there 
may once more be millions such, instead of units as now. 
Made; i fansto pcde. And may future generations, ac- 
quainted again with the silences, and once more cogni- 
sant of what is noble and faithful and divine, look back 
on lis with pity and incredulous astonishment ! —L. D. 
P. V. 



POLITICS. 



313 



JUSTICE. 
In this God's-world, with its wild-whirling eddies and 
mad foam-oceans, where men and nations perish as if 
without law, and judgment for an unjust thing is sternly- 
delayed, dost thou think that there is therefore no jus- 
tice ? It is what the fool hath said in his heart. It is 
what the wise, in all times, were wise because they de- 
nied, and knew forever not to be. I tell thee again, 
there is nothing else but justice. One strong thing I 
find here below : the just thing, the true thing. My 
friend, if thou hadst all the artillery of Woolwich trund- 
ling at thy back in support of an unjust thing ; and in- 
finite bonfires visibly waiting ahead of thee, to blaze 
centuries long for thy victory on behalf of it, — I would 
advise thee to call halt, to fling down thy baton, and 
say, "In God's name, No!" Thy 'success?' Poor 
devil, what will thy success amount to ? If the thing is 
unjust, thou has not succeeded ; no, not though bonfires 
blazed from North to South, and bells rang, and editors 
wrote leading-articles, and the just thing lay trampled 
out of sight, to all mortal eyes an abolished and anni- 
hilated thing. Success ? In few years wilt thou be dead 
and dark, — all cold, eyeless, deaf; no blaze of bonfires, 
dong-dong of bells or leading-articles visible or audible 
to thee again forever : What kind of success is that ! 
—P. &- P. I. 2. 

EDUCATION. 
Who would suppose that Education were a thing which 
had to be advocated on the ground of local expediency, 
or indeed on any ground ? As if it stood not on the 
basis of everlasting duty, as a prime necessity of man. 
It is a thing that should need no advocating ; much as 
it does actually need. To impart the gift of thinking 
to those who cannot think, and yet who could in that 
case think : this, one would imagine, was the first func- 
tion a government had to set about discharging. Were 
it not a cruel thing to see, in any province of an em- 



214 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

pire, the inhabitants Hving all mutilated in their limbs. 
Each strong man with his right arm lamed ? How 
much crueller to find the strong soul, with its eyes still 
sealed, its eyes extinct so that it sees not ! Light has 
come into the world, but to this poor peasant it has 
come in vain. For six thousand years the Sons of 
Adam, in sleepless effort, have been devising, doing, 
<liscovering ; in mysterious infinite indissoluble com- 
munion, warring, a little band of brothers, against the 
great black empire of Necessity and Night ; they have 
accomplished such a conquest and conquests : and to 
this man it is all as if it had not been. The four-and- 
twenty letters of the Alphabet are still Runic enigmas to 
him. He passes by on the other side ; and that great 
Spiritual Kingdom, the toilworn conquest of his own 
brothers, all that his brothers have conquered, is a thing 
non-extant for him. An invisible empire ; he knows it 
not, suspects it not. And is it not his withal ; the con- 
quest of his own brothers, the lawfully acquired possession 
of all men ? Baleful enchantment lies over him, from 
generation to generation ; he knows not that such an em- 
pire is his, that such an empire is at all. O, what are 
bills of rights, emancipations of black slaves into black 
apprentices, lawsuits in chancery for some short usufruct 
of a bit of land? The grand 'seedfield of Time' is the 
man's, and you give it him not. Time's seedfield, which 
includes the Earth and all her seedfields and pearl- 
oceans, nay her sowers too and pearl-divers, all that was 
wise and heroic and victorious here below ; of which 
the Earth's centuries are but as furrows, for it stretches 
forth from the Beginning onward even into this Day ? 

, 'My inheritance how lordly wide and fair; 
Time is my fair seedfield, of Time I'm heir! ' 

Heavier wrong is not done under the sun. It lasts 
from year to year, from century to century; the blinded 
sire slaves himself out and leaves a blinded .son; and 
men made in the image of God, continue as two-legged 
beasts of labour. —Ch. x. 



POLITICS. • 215 



THE UNEDUCATED POOR. 



It is not because of his toils that I lament for the poor: 
we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name our steal- 
ing), which is worse ; no faithful workman finds his 
task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst ; but 
for hifn also there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden 
and weary ; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, 
and of the deepest ; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy 
heaven of Rest envelops him, and fitful glittering of 
cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over is, 
that the lamp of his soul should go out ; that no ray 
of heavenly, or even of Earthly knowledge, should 
visit him ; but only, in the haggard darkness, like two 
spectres, Fear and Indignation bear him company. 
Alas, while the Body stands so broad and brawny, 
must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost 
annihilated ! Alas, was this too a breath of God ; be- 
stowed in Heaven, but on Earth never to be unfolded ! 
— That there should one Man die ignorant who had 
capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy, were it to 
happen more than twenty times in the minute, as by 
some computation it does. — -S". R. III. 4. 

A WAIT THE ISSUE. 

A^AIT the issue. In all battles, if you await the issue, 
each fighter has prospered according to his right. His 
right and his might, at the close of the account, were 
one and the same. He has fought with all his might, 
and in exact proportion to all his right he has prevailed. 
His very death is no victory over him. He dies indeed; 
but his work lives, very truly lives. A heroic Wallace, 
quartered on the scaffold, cannot hinder that his Scot- 
land become, one day, a part of England : but he does 
hinder that it become, on tyrannous unfair terms, a part 
of it; commands still, as with a god's voice, from his 
old Valhalla and Temple of the Brave, that there be a 
just real union as of brother and brother, not a false 



3i6 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



and merely semblant one as of slave and master. If 
the union with England be in fact one of Scotland's 
•chief blessings, we thank Wallace withal that it was not 
the chief curse. Scotland is not Ireland : no, because 
brave men rose there, and said, "Behold, ye must not 
tread us down like slaves ; and ye shall not, — and can- 
not ! " Fight on, thou brave true heart, and falter not, 
through dark fortune and through bright. The cause 
thou fightest for, so far as it is true, no farther, yet pre- 
cisely so far, is very sure of victory. The falsehood 
alone of it will be conquered, will be abolished, as it 
ought to be: but the truth of it is part of Nature's own 
Laws, co-operates with the World's eternal Tenden- 
cies, and cannot be conquered. —P- S^ P. I. 2. 



VI. 
HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



DEATH OF LOUIS XV. 

Poor Louis ! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, 
where like mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false 
sounds for hire ; but with thee it is frightful earnest. 

Frightful to all men is Death ; from of old named 
King of Terrors. Our little compact home of an Ex- 
istence, where we dwelt complaining, yet as in a home, 
is passing, in dark agonies, into an Unknown of Sep- 
aration, Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility. The 
Heathen Emperor asks of his soul : Into what places 
art thou now departing? The Catholic King must 
answer: To the Judgment-bar of the Most High God ! 
Yes, it is a summing up of Life ; a final settling, and 
giving-in the "account of the deeds done in the body:" 
they are done now ; and lie there unalterable, and to 
bear their fruits, long as Eternity shall last. 

Louis XV. had always the kingliest abhorrence of 
Death. Unlike that praying Duke of Orleans, hgalite's 
grandfather, — for indeed several of them had a touch 
of madness, — who honestly believed that there was no 
Death ! He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed, 
started up once on a time, -glowing with sulphurous 
contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who 
had stumbled on the words, feu roi d'Espagne (the late 

319 



220 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

King of Spain): '' Feii ro'i, Monsieur?" — "Monseign- 
eur," hastily answered the trembling but adroit man of 
business, "c'est line litre quHls prcnnent ('tis a title they 
take)." Louis, we say, was not so happy ; but he did 
what he could. He would not suffer Death to be 
spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funereal 
monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. 
It is the resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, 
sticks his foolish head in the ground, and would fain 
forget that his foolish unseeing body is not unseen too. 
Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism, significant 
of the same thing, and of more, he would go; or stop- 
ping his court carriages, would send into churchyards, 
and ask, "how many new graves there were to-day," 
though it gave his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest 
qualms. We can figure the thought of Louis that day, 
when, all royally caparisoned for hunting, he met, at 
some sudden turning in the Wood of Senart, a ragged 
Peasant with a coffin: "For whom?" — It was for a 
poor brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes 
noticed slaving in those quarters: "What did he die 
of?" — "Of hunger:" — the King gave his steed the 
spur. 

But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching 
at his own heart-strings ; unlooked for, inexorable ! 
Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee. No palace 
walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buck- 
rams of stiffest ceremonial could keep him out ; but he 
is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will extinguish 
it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera 
and scenic show, at length becomest a reality : sumptu- 
ous Versailles bursts asunder, like a Dream, into void 
Immensity; Time is done, and all the scaffolding of. 
Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round thy 
soul : the pale Kingdoms yawn open ; there must thou 
enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is appointed 
thee ! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



321 



agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is 
thine ! Purgatory and Hellfire, now all too possible, in 
the prospect : in the retrospect, — alas, what thing didst 
thou do that were not better undone ; what mortal didst 
thou generously help ; what sorrow hadst thou mercy 
on? Do the "five hundred thousand" ghosts, who 
sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from Rosbach 
to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an 
epigram, — crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul 
Harem ; the curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of 
daughters? Miserable man! thou "hast done evil as 
thou couldst : " thy whole existence seems one hideous 
abortion and mistake of Nature ; the use and meaning 
of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin, 
devolving the works of men ; daily dragging virgins to 
thy cave ; — clad also in scales that no spear would 
pierce : no spear but Death's ? A Griffin not fabulous 
but real ! Frightful, O Louis, seem these moments for 
thee. — We will pry no further into the horrors of a sin- 
ner's deathbed. —F. R., P. /., B. I. 4. 

TAKING OF THE BASTILLE. 

Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew " into his 
interior" soon after midnight of Sunday. He remains 
there ever since, hampered, as all military gentlemen 
now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The 
H6tel-de-Ville "invites" him to admit National Sol- 
diers, which is as oft name for surrendering. On the 
other hand, His Majesty's orders were precise. His 
garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced 
by thirty-two young Swiss; his walls indeed are nine 
feet thick, he has cannon and powder ; but, alas, only 
one day's provision of victuals. The city too is French, 
the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous old De 
Launay, think what thou wilt do ! 

All morning, since nine, there has been a cry every 
where: To the Bastille! Repeated "deputations of cit- 
21 



322 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



izens" have been here, passionate for arms; whom De 
Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through 
port-holes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Ro- 
siere gains admittance ; finds De Launay indisposed for 
surrender ; nay disposed for blowing up the place 
rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements : 
heaps of paving-stones, old iron and missiles lie piled ; 
cannon all duly levelled ; in every embrasure a cannon, 
— only drawn back a little ! But onwards, behold, O 
Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through 
every street: tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating 
the geiic'rale : the Suburb Saint- Antoine rolling hither- 
ward wholly, as one man ! Such vision (spectral yet 
real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, 
beholdest in this moment : prophetic of what other 
Phantasmagories, and loud- gibbering Spectral Realities, 
which thou yet beholdest not, but shalt! " Que voulez- 
vousf" said De Launay, turning pale at the sight, with 
an air of reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," 
said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime, "what mean 
you? Consider if I could not precipitate both of us 
from this height," — say only a hundred feet, exclusive 
of the walled ditch ! Whereupon De Launay fell silent. 
Thuriot shows himself from some pinnacle, to comfort 
the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent: then 
descends ; departs with protest ; with warning addressed 
also to the Invalides, — on whom, however, it produces 
but a mixed indistinct impression. The old heads are 
none of the clearest; besides, it is said, De Launay 
has been profuse of beverages (prodigiie des boissons). 
They think, they will not fire, — if not fired on, if they 
can help it ; but must, on the whole, be ruled consider- 
ably by circumstances. 

Wo to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, if thou 
canst not, taking some one firm decision, rule circum- 
stances ! Soft speeches will not serve ; hard grape-shot 
is questionable ; but hovering between the two is un- 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



323 



questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men ; their 
infinite hum wa'xing ever louder, into imprecations, 
perhaps into crackle of stray musketry, — which latter, 
on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The 
Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new 
deputation of citizens (it is the third and noisiest of all) 
penetrates that way into the Outer Court : soft speeches 
producing no clearance of these, De Launay gives fire; 
pulls up his Drawbridge. A slight sputter ; — which 
has kindled the too combustible chaos ; made it a roar- 
ing fire-chaos ! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight of 
its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of 
fire), into endless rolling explosion of musketry, dis- 
traction, execration ; — and over head, from the Fortress, 
let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming, to 
show what we coiUd do. The Bastille is besieged ! 

On, then, all Frenchmen, that have hearts in your 
bodies ! Roar with all your throats, of cartilage and 
metal, ye Sons of Liberty ; stir spasmodically whatso- 
ever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; 
for it is the hour ! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cart- 
wright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment Dau- 
phine; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though 
the fiery hail whistles round thee ! Never over nave 
or felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with 
it, man ; down with it to Orcus : let the whole accursed 
Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up for- 
ever ! Mounted, some say, on the roof of the guard- 
room, some "on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall," 
Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (also 
an old soldier) seconding him : the chain yields, breaks; 
the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec 
fraeas). Glorious : and yet, alas, it is still but the 
outworks. The Eight grim Towers, with their Invalide 
musketry, their paving stones and cannon- mouths, still 
soar aloft intact; — Ditch yawning impassable, stone- 
faced ; the inner Drawbridge with its back towards us ; 
the Bastille is still to take ! 



324 



THE CARLYLE ANIHOLOGY. 



To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be 
one of the most important in History) perhaps tran- 
scends the talent of mortals. Could one but, after 
infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan 
of the building ! But there is open Esplanade, at the 
end of the Rue Saint-Antoine ; there are such Fore- 
Courts, Cour Avance, Cour de V Onne, arched Gateway 
(where Louis Tournay now fights); then new draw- 
bridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, and the 
grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic'Mass, high-frowning 
there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred 
and twenty ; — beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we 
said, by mere Chaos come again ! Ordnance of all 
calibres ; throats of all capacities ; men of aH plans, 
every man his own engineer : seldom since the war of 
Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so anomalous a 
thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals! 
no one would heed him in coloured clothes : half-pay 
Hulin is haranguing Gardes Fran^aises in the Place de 
Greve. Frantic Patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear 
them, still hot, (or apparently so), to the H6tel-de-Ville; 
— Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt ! Flesselles is 
"pale to the very lips," for the roar of the multitude 
grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the acme of its 
frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every 
street-barricade, there whirls simmering a minor whirl- 
pool, — strengthening the barricade, since God knows 
what is coming ; and all minor whirlpools play distract- 
edly into that Grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing 
round the Bastille. 

And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine- 
merchant has become an impromptu cannoneer. See 
Georget, of the Marine Service, fresh from Brest, ply 
the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not 
used to the like): Georget lay, last night, taking his 
ease at his inn ; the King of Siam's cannon also 4ay, 
knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



325 



now, at the right instant, they have got together, and 
discourse eloquent music. For, hearing what was to- 
ward, Georget sprang from the Brest DiHgence, and 
ran. Gardes Frangaises also will be here, with real 
artillery: were not the walls so thick! — Upwards from 
the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs 
and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry, 
without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing compara- 
tively at their ease from behind stone ; hardly through 
port-holes, show the tip of a nose. We fall, shot; and 
make no impression ! 

Let conflagration rage ; of whatsoever is combusti- 
ble ! Guard-rooms are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. 
A distracted "Perukemaker with two fiery torches" is 
for burning "the saltpetres of the Arsenal;" — had not 
a woman run screaming ;" had not a Patriot, with some 
tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the 
wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), 
overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. 
A young beautiful lady, seized escaping in these Outer 
Courts, and thought falsely to be De Launay's daughter, 
shall be burnt in De Launay's sight ; she lies swooned 
on a paillasse : but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin 
Bonnemere the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. 
Straw is burnt ; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go 
up in white smoke : almost to the choking of Patriotism 
itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag 
back one cart; and Reole the ''gigantic haberdasher" 
another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of Babel; 
noise as of the Crack of Doom! 

Blood flows ; the aliment of new madness. The 
wounded are carried into houses of the Rue Cerisaie ; 
the dying leave their last mandate not to yield till the 
accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall ? 
The walls are so thick ! Deputations, three in number, 
arrive from the H6tel-de-Ville ; Abbe Fauchet (who 
was of one) can say, with what almost superhuman 



326 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



courage of benevolence. These wave their Town-flag 
in the arched Gateway ; and stand, roUing their drum ; 
but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, De Lau- 
nay cannot hear them, dare not beheve them : they 
return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still 
singing in their ears. What to do ? The Firemen are 
here, squirting with their fire-pumps on the Invalides 
cannon, to wet the touchholes ; they unfortunately can- 
not squirt so high ; but produce only clouds of spray. 
Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. 
Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint- 
Antoine, advises rather that the place be fired, by a 
"mixture of phosphorus and oil-of- turpentine spouted 
up through forcing pumps:" O Spinola-Santerre, hast 
thou the mixture ready? Every man his own engineer! 
And still the fire-deluge abates not : even women are 
firing, and Turks ; at least one woman (with her sweet- 
heart), and one Turk. Gardes Fran9aises have come : 
real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; 
half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the midst of 
thousands. 

How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its 
Inner Court there, at its ease, hour after hour ; as if 
nothing special for it or the world, were passing ! It 
tolled One when the firing began ; and is now pointing 
towards Five, and still the firing slakes not. — Far down, 
in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of 
earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely. 

Wo to thee, Du Launay, with thy poor hundred In- 
valides ! Broglie is distant, and his ears heavy ; Besen- 
val hears, but can send no help. One poor troop of 
Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the 
Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf "We are come to join 
you," said the Captain ; for the crowd seems shoreless. 
A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared 
aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there 
is sense in him ; and croaks: "Alight then, and give up 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



327 



your arms!" The Hussar-Captain is too happy to be 
escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who 
the squat individual was ? Men answer, It is M. Marat, 
author of the excellent pacific Avis ait Pcuple ! Great 
truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of 
emergence and new-birth : and yet this same day come 
four years — ! — But let the curtains of the Future 
hang. 

What shall De Launay do ? One thing only De Lau- 
nay could have done : what he said he would do. Fancy 
him sitting, from the first, with lighted taper, within 
arm's length of the Powder- Magazine; motionless, like 
old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp-holder ; coldly ap- 
prising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight motion of his 
eye, what his resolution was : — Harmless he sat there, 
while unharmed ; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, 
could, might, would, or should, in nowise be surren- 
dered, save to the King's Messenger : one old man's life 
is worthless, so it be lost with honour ; but think, ye 
brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille 
springs skyward ! — In such statuesque, taper-holding 
attitude, one fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, 
the red Clerks of the Basoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen 
and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work 
their will. 

And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou con- 
sidered how each man's heart is so tremulously respon- 
sive to the hearts of all men ; hast thou noted how om- 
nipotent is the very sound of many men ? How their 
shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul ; their howl of 
contumely withers with unfelt pangs ? The Ritter 
Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest pas 
sage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the 
Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kai- 
ser : Bread ! Bread ! Great is the combined voice of 
men ; the utterance of their instincts, which are truer 
than their thoughts : it is the greatest a man encount- 



328 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY, 



ers among the sounds and shadows which make up this 
World of Time. He who can resist that, has his foot- 
ing somewhere beyond Time. De Launay could not do 
it. Distracted, he hovers between two ; hopes in the 
middle of despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares 
that he will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, and 
does not blow it. Unhappy old De Launay, it is the 
death-agony of thy Bastille and thee ! Jail, Jailoring 
and Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must 
finish. 

For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared : 
call it the World-Chimaera, blowing fire ! The poor 
Invahdes have sunk under their battlements, or rise only 
with reversed muskets : they have made a white flag of 
napkins ; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, 
for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Port- 
cullis look weary of firing ; disheartened in the fire- 
deluge : a port-hole at the drawbridge is opened, as by 
one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty 
man ! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that 
stone Ditch ; plank resting on parapet, balanced by 
weight of Patriots, — he hovers perilous : such a Dove 
towards such an Ark ! Deftly, thou shifty Usher : one 
man already fell ; and lies smashed, far down there, 
against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls not: deftly, 
unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss 
holds a paper through his port-hole ; the shifty Usher 
snatches it, and returns. Terms of surrender: Pardon, 
immunity to all! Are they accepted? — " Foi d'officier, 
On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin, — 
or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!" 
Sinks the drawbridge, — Usher Maillard bolting it when 
down ; rushes-in the living deluge : the Bastille is 
fallen ! Victoire ! La Bastille est prise I 



Why dwell on what follows ? Hulin's foi d'officier 
should have been kept, but could not. The Swiss stand 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 320 

drawn up, disguised in white canvas smocks ; the In- 
valides without disguise ; their arms all piled against 
the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstacy that the 
death-peril is passed, "leaps joyfully on their necks; " 
but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstasy not 
wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, 
plunging headlong : had not the Gardes Fran^aises, in 
their cool military way, "wheeled round with arms lev- 
elled," it would have plunged suicidally, by the hundred 
or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch. 

And so it goes plunging through court and corrider ; 
billowing uncontrollable, firing from windows — on it- 
self; in hot frenzy of triumph, of grief and vengeance 
for its slain. The poor Invalides will fare ill ; one 
Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back, 
with a death-thrust. Let all Prisoners be marched to 
the Townhall, to be judged! — Alas, already one poor 
Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his mained 
body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged there. 
This same right hand, it is said, turned back De Launay 
from the Powder- Magazine, and saved Paris. 

De Launay, "discovered in gray frock with poppy- 
coloured riband," is for killing himself with the sword 
of his cane. He shall to the H6tel-de-ville ; HuHn, 
Maillard and others escorting him ; Elie marching fore- 
most "with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point." 
Through roarings and cursings; through bustlings, 
clutchings, and at last through strokes ! Your escort 
is hustled aside, felled down ; Hulin sinks exhausted 
on a heap of stones. Miserable De Launay! He shall 
never enter the H6tel-de-Ville : only his "bloody hair- 
queue, held up in a bloody hand ; " that shall enter, 
for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there ; 
the head is off through the streets ; ghastly, aloft on a 
pike. 

Rigorous De Launay has died; crying out, "O 
friends, kill me fast I " Merciful De Losme must die ; 



230 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

though Gratitude embraces him, in this fearful hour, 
and will die for him ; it avails not. Brothers, your 
wrath is cruel ! Your Place de Greve is become a 
Throat of the Tiger ; full of mere fierce bellowings, 
and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred ; 
one other Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron ; with 
difficulty, with generous perseverance, the Gardes 
Franfaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles, 
stricken long since with the paleness of death, must 
descend from his seat, "to be judged at the Palais 
Royal," — alas, to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, 
at the turning of the first street! — 

O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams 
fall slant on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old 
women spinning in cottages ; on ships far out in the 
silent main ; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, 
where high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now 
dancing with double-jacketed Hussar- Officers; — and 
also on this roaring Hell-porch of a H6tel-de-Ville ! 
Babel Tower, with its confusion of tongues, were not 
Bedlam added with the conflagration of thoughts, was 
no type of it. One forest of distracted steel bristles, 
endless, in front of an Electoral Committee ; points it- 
self, in horrid radii, against this and the other accused 
breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus ; and 
they, scarcely crediting it, have conquered: a prodigy of 
prodigies ; delirious, — as it could not but be. Denun- 
ciation, vengeance ; blaze of triumph on a dark ground 
of terror : all outward, all inward things fallen into one 
general wreck of madness ! 

Electoral Committee ? Had it a thousand throats 
of brass, it would not suffice. Abbe Lefevre, in the 
Vaults down below, is black as Vulcan, distributing that 
"five thousand-weight of Powder;" with what perils, 
these eight-and-forty hours ! Last night, a Patriot, in 
liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one 
of the Powder-barrels : there smoked he ; independent 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 331 

of the world, — till the Abbe "purchased his pipe for 
three francs," and pitched it far. 

Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee look- 
ing on, sits "with drawn sword bent in three places;" 
with battered helm, for he was of the Queen's Regi- 
ment, Cavalry ; with torn regimentals, face singed and 
soiled ; comparable, some think, to " an antique war- 
rior;" — judging the people; forming a list of Bastille 
Heroes. O Friends, stain not with blood the greenest 
laurels ever gained in this world: such is the burden 
of Elie's song: could it but be listened to. Courage, 
Elie ! Courage, ye Municipal Electors ! A declining 
sun ; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will 
bring assuagement, dispersion : all earthly things must 
end. 

Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille 
Prisoners, borne shoulder-high; seven Heads on pikes; 
the Keys of the Bastille ; and much else. See also 
the Gardes Frangaises, in their steadfast military way, 
marching home to their barracks, with the Invalides 
and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square. It is one 
year and two months since these same men stood un- 
participating, with Brennus d'Agoust at the Palais de 
Justice, when Fate overtook D'Espremenil ; and now 
they have participated ; and will participate. Not 
Gardes Fran9aises henceforth, but Centre Grenadiers 
of tJie National Guard: men of iron discipline and hu- 
mour, — not without a kind of thought in them ! 

Likewise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue 
thundering through the dusk; its paper archives shall 
fly white. Old secrets come to view ; and long-buried 
Despair finds voice. Read this portion of an old Let- 
ter : "If for my consolation Monseigneur would grant 
me, for the sake of God and the Most Blessed Trinity, 
that I could have news of my dear wife ; were it only 
her name on a card, to show that she is alive! It were 
the greatest consolation I could receive ; and I should 



332 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



forever bless the greatness of Monseigneur." Poor 
Prisoner, who namest thyself Qiieret-Dmicry, and hast 
no other history, — she is dead, that dear wife of thine, 
and thou art dead ! 'Tis fifty years since thy breaking 
heart put this question ; to be heard now first and long 
heard, in the hearts of men. 

But so does the July twilight thicken; so must Paris, 
as sick children, and all distracted creatures do, brawl 
itself finally into a kind of sleep. Municipal Electors, 
astonished to find their heads still uppermost, are home: 
only Moreau de Saint-Mery of tropical birth and heart, 
of coolest judgment ; he, with two others, shall sit per- 
manent at the Townhall. Paris sleeps; gleams upward 
the illuminated City: patrols go clashing, without com- 
mon watchword ; there go rumours ; alarms of war, to 
the extent of "fifteen thousand men marching through 
the Suburb Saint-Antoine," — who never got it marched 
through. Of the day's distraction judge by this of the 
night: Moreau de Saint-Mery, "before rising from his 
seat, gave upwards of three thousand orders." What a 
head ; comparable to Friar Bacon's Brass Head ! 
Within it lies all Paris. Prompt must the answer be, 
right or wrong ; in Paris is no other Authority extant. 
Seriously, a most cool clear head; — for which also 
thou, O brave Saint-Mery, in many capacities, from 
august Senator to Merchant's-Clerk, Book-dealer, Vice- 
King ; in many places, from Virginia to Sardinia, shalt, 
ever as a brave man, find employment. 

Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, "amid 
a great affluence of people," who did not harm him; he 
marches, with faint-growing tread, down the left bank 
of the Seine, all night, — towards infinite space. Resum- 
moned shall Besenval himself be ; for trial, for difficult 
acquittal. His King's-troops, his Royal- Allemand, are 
gone hence forever. 

The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done ; the 
Orangerie is silent except for nightbirds. Over in the 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



333 



Salle des Menus, Vice-president Lafayette, with un- 
snuffed lights, "with some Hundred or so of Members, 
stretched on tables round him," sits erect ; outwatching 
the Bear. This day, a second solemn Deputation went 
to his Majesty ; a second and then a third : with no 
effect. What will the end of these things be ? 

In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings 
of terror; though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, 
ye foolish women ! His Majesty, kept in happy igno- 
rance, perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods 
of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, 
having official right of entrance, gains access to the 
Royal Apartments ; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in 
his constitutional way, the Job's-news. ^' Mais,'' said 
poor Louis, "c'est une revolte, Why, that is a revolt!" — 
"Sire," answered Liancourt, "it is not a revolt, — it is a 
revolution." —F. R., P. I., B. V. 6, 7. 

AS IN THE AGE OF GOLD. 

Meanwhile to Paris, ever going and returning, day 
after day, and all day long, towards that Field of Mars, 
it becomes painfully apparent that the spade-work there 
cannot be got done in time. There is such an area of 
it ; three hundred thousand square feet : for from the 
Ecole Militaire (which will need to be done up in wood 
with balconies and galleries) westward to the Gate by 
the River (where also shall be wood, in triumphal arch- 
es), we count some thousand yards of length ; and for 
breadth, from this umbrageous Avenue of eight rows, 
on the South side, to that corresponding one on the 
North, some thousand feet more or less. All this to be 
scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the sides : 
high enough ; for it must be rammed down there, and 
shaped stair- wise into as many as "thirty ranges of 
convenient seats," firm-trimmed with turf, covered with 
enduring timber; — and then our huge pyramidal 



334 



THE CARLYLE ANTPIOLOGY. 



Fatherland's- Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the centre, 
also to be raised and stair-stepped. Force-work with a 
vengeance ; it is a World's Amphitheatre ! There are 
but fifteen days good : and at this languid rate, it might 
take half as many weeks. What is singular too, the 
spademen seem to work lazily ; they will not work 
double-tides, even for offer of more wages, though their 
tide is but seven hours ; they declare angrily that the 
human tabernacle requires occasional rest ! 

Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing ? Aristocrats were 
capable of that. Only six months since, did not evi- 
dence get afloat that subterranean Paris, — for we stand 
over quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were 
midway between Heaven and the Abyss, and are hollow 
underground, — was charged with gunpowdej^ which 
should make us "leap?" Till a Cordeliers Deputation 
actually went to examine, and found it — carried off 
again ! An accursed, incurable brood ; all asking for 
"passports," in these sacred days. Trouble, of rioting, 
chateaux-burning, is in the Limousin and elsewhere; for 
they are busy ! Between the best of Peoples and the 
best of Restorer Kings they would sow grudges ; with 
what a fiend's grin would they see this Federation, 
looked for by the Universe, fail ! 

Fail for the want of spadework, however, it shall not. 
He that has four limbs aaid a French heart can do spade- 
work ; and will ! On the first July Monday, scarcely 
has the signal-cannon boomed ; scarcely have the lan- 
guescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down their 
tools, and the eyes of onlookers turned sorrowfully to 
the still high Sun ; when this and the other Patriot, fire 
in his eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself 
begins indignantly wheeling. Whom scores and then 
hundreds follow ; and soon a volunteer Fifteen Thou- 
sand are shovelling and trundHng; with the heart of 
giants: and all in right order, with that extemporaneous 
adroitness of theirs : whereby such a lift has been given, 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



335 



worth three mercenary ones; — whi'ch may ejid when 
the late twihght thickens, in triumph-shouts, heard or 
heard of beyond Montmartre ! 

A sympathetic population will zvait, next day, with 
eagerness, till the tools are free. Or why wait ? 
Spades elsewhere exist ! And so now bursts forth that 
effulgence of Parisian enthusiasm, good-heartedness and 
brotherly love ; such, if Chroniclers are trustworthy, as 
was not witnessed since the Age of Gold. Paris, male 
and female, precipitates itself towards its Southwest 
extremity, spade on shoulder. Streams of men, with- 
out order ; or in order, as ranked fellow-craftsmen, as 
natural or accidental reunions, march towards the Field 
of Mars. Three-deep these march ; to the sound of 
stringed music; preceded by young girls with green 
boughs and tricolor streamers : they have shouldered, 
soldier- wise, their shovels and picks ; and with one 
throat are singing /r^-zr^:. Yqs, pardien, fii-ira, cry the 
passengers on the streets. All corporate Guilds, and 
public and private Bodies of Citizens, from -the highest 
to the lowest, march ; the very Hawkers, one finds, 
have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring 
Villages turn out : their able men come marching, to 
village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their 
Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, 
and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and 
fifty thousand workers ; nay at certain seasons, as some 
count, two hundred and fifty thousand ; for, in the after- 
noon especially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty 
day's work, would run ! A stirring City : from the 
time you reach the Place Louis- Quinze, southward over 
the River, by all Avenues, it is one living throng. So 
many workers ; and no mercenary mock-workers, but 
real ones that lie freely to it: each Patriot stretcJics 
himself against the stubborn glebe ; hews and wheels 
with the whole weight that is in him. 

Amiable infants, amiables enfans ! They do the 



336 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



^^ police de V atelier ■ too, the guidance and governance, 
themselves ; with that ready will of theirs, with that 
extemporaneous adroitness. It is a true brethren's 
work ; all distinctions confounded, abolished ; as it was 
in the beginning, when Adam himself delved. Long- 
frocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-car- 
riers, with swallow-tailed well-frizzled Incroyables of a 
Patriot turn ; dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke- 
makers ; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate and Judge 
are there, and all Heads of Districts : sober Nuns sister- 
like with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and females 
in common circumstances named unfortunate : the pa- 
triot Rag-picker, and perfumed dweller in palaces ; for 
Patriotism like New-birth, and also like Death, levels 
all. The Printers have come marching, Prudhomme's 
all in Paper-caps with Revolutions de Paris printed on 
them ; — as Camille notes ; wishing that in these great 
days there should be a Facte des Ecrivains too, or 
Federation of Able Editors. Beautiful to see ! The 
snowy linen and delicate pantaloon alternates with the 
soiled check-shirt and bushed-breeches ; for both have 
cast their coats, and under both are four limbs and a set 
of Patriot muscles. There do they pick and shovel ; 
or bend forward, yoked in long strings to box-barrow 
or overloaded tumbril ; joyous, with one mind. Abbe 
Sieyes is seen pulling, wiry, vehement, if too light for 
draught ; by the side of Beauharnais, who shall get 
Kings though he be none. Abbe Maury did not pull; 
but the Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised like 
him, and he had to pull in &^gy. Let no august Sen- 
ator disdain the work : Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo 
Lafayette are there ; — and, alas, shall be there again 
another day ! The King himself comes to see : sky- 
rending Vive-le-roi ! "and suddenly with shouldered 
spades they form a guard of honour round him." 
Whosoever can come comes; to work, or to look, and 
bless the work. 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 337 

Whole families have come. One whole family we 
see clearly of three generations : the father picking, the 
mother shovelling, the young ones wheeling assiduous ; 
old grandfather, hoary w^ith ninety-three years, holds in 
his arms the youngest of all : frisky, not helpful this 
one : who nevertheless may tell it to his grandchildren ; 
aud how the Future and the Past alike looked on, and 
with failing or with half-formed voice, faltered their 
fa-ira. A vintner has wheeled in, on Patriot truck 
beverage of wine; "Drink not, my brothers, if ye are 
not thirsty; that your cask may last the longer:' 
neither did any drink but men "evidently exhausted.' 
A dapper Abbe looks on, sneering: "To the barrow!' 
cry several ; whom he, lest a worse thing befall him 
obeys : nevertheless one wiser Patriot barrowman, arriv- 
ing now, interposes his '' arretcz ;" setting down his own 
barrow, he snatches the Abbe's ; trundles it fast, like an 
infected thing, forth of the Champ-de-Mars circuit, and 
discharges it tJiere. Thus too a certain person (of some 
quality, or private capital, to appearance), entering has- 
tily, flings down his coat, waistcoat and two watches, 
and is rushing to the thick of the work : " But your 
watches?" cries the general voice. — "Does one distrust 
his brothers ? " answers he; nor were the watches stolen. 
How beautiful is noble-sentiment: like gossamer gauze, 
beautiful and cheap ; which will stand no tear and wear! 
Beautiful cheap gossamer gauze, thou film-shadow of a 
raw-material of Virtue, which art not woven, nor likely 
to be, into Duty ; thou art better than nothing, and 
also worse ! 

Young Boarding-school Boys, College Students, shout 
Vive la Nation, and regret that they have yet "only 
their <-.weat to give." What say we of Boys? Beauti- 
fullest Hebes ; the loveliest of Paris, in their light air- 
robes, with riband-girdle of tricolor, are there ; shovel- 
ling and wheeling with the rest ; their Hebe eyes 
brighter with enthusiasm, and long-hair in beautiful 
22 



338 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



dishevelment ; hard-pressed are their small fingers ; but 
they make the patriot barrow go, and even force it to 
the summit of the slope (with a little tracing, which 
what man's arm were not too happy to lend ?) — then 
bound down with it again, and go for more; with their 
long locks and tricolors blown back; graceful as the 
rosy Hours. O, as that evening Sun fell over the 
Champ-de-Mars, and tinted with fire the thick umbra- 
geous boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, 
and struck direction those Domes and two-and-forty 
Windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all of 
burnished gold, — saw he on his wide zodiac road other 
such sight? A living garden spotted and dotted with 
such flowerage; all colours of the prism; the beautiful- 
lest blent friendly with the usefullest ; all growing and 
working brotherlike there, under one warm feeling, were 
it but for days ; once and no second time ! But Night 
is sinking ; these Nights too, into Eternity. The hasti- 
est traveller Versailles-ward has drawn bridle on the 
heights of Chaillot : and looked for moments over the 
River ; reporting at Versailles what he saw, not with- 
out tears. 

Meanwhile, from all points of the compass. Federates 
are arriving: fervid children of the South, "who glory 
in their Mirabeau;" considerate North-blooded Moun- 
taineers of Jura; sharp Bretons, with their Gaelic sud- 
denness ; Normans, not to be overreached in bargain : 
all now animated with one noblest fire of Patriotism. 
Whom the Paris brethren march forth to receive ; with 
military solemnities, with fraternal embracing, and a 
hospitality worthy of the heroic ages. They assist at 
the Assembly's Debates, these Federates; the Galleries 
are reserved for them. They assist in the toils of the 
Champ-de-Maps; each new troop wil put its hand to 
the spade ; lift a hod of earth on the Altar of the 
Fatherland. But the flourishes of rhetoric, for it is a 
gesticulating People ; the moral-sublime of those Ad- 



HISTORICAI. AND MISCELLANEOUS. oog 

dresses to an august Assembly, to a Patriot Restorer ! 
Our Breton Captain of Federates kneels even, in a fit 
of enthusiasm, and gives up his sword ; he wet-eyed to 
a King wet-eyed. Poor Louis ! These, as he said 
afterwards, were among the bright days of his life. 

IL 

And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired 
spademen, and almost of Destiny itself (for there has 
been much rain too), the Champ-de-Mars, on the 13th 
of the month, is fairly ready : trimmed, rammed, but- 
tressed with firm masonry ; and Patriotism can stroll 
over it admiring ; and as it were rehearsing, for in 
every head is some unutterable image of the morrow. 
Pray Heaven there be not clouds. Nay what far worse 
cloud is this, of a misguided Municipality that talks of 
admitting Patriotism to the solemnity by tickets ! 
Was it by tickets we were admitted to the work ; find 
to what brought the work ? Did we take the Bastille 
by tickets ? A misguided Municipality sees the error ; 
at late midnight, rolling drums announce to Patriotism 
starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to be 
ticketless. Pull down thy night-cap therefore ; and, 
with demi-articulate grumble, significant of several 
things, go pacified to sleep again. To-morrow is 
Wednesday morning : unforgettable among the fasti 
of the world. 

The morning comes, cold for a July one ; but such a 
festivity would make Greenland smile. Through every 
inlet of that National Amphitheatre (for it is a league 
in circuit, cut u^ith openings at due intervals), floods-in 
the living throng; covers, without tumult, space after 
space. The Ecole Militaire has galleries and overvault- 
ing canopies, wherein Carpentry and Painting have 
vied, for the upper Authorities ; triumphal arches, at 
the Gate by the River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet 
well-meant, and orthodox. Far aloft, over the Altar 



340 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



of the Fatherland, on their tall crane standards of iron, 
swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or Pans of Incense; 
dispensing sweet incense-fumes, — unless for the Heathen 
Mythology, one sees not for whom. Two hundred 
thousand Patriotic Men ; and, twice as good, one 
hundred thousand Patriotic Women, all decked and 
glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in this Champ-de- 
Mars. 

What a picture : that circle of bright-dyed Life, 
spread up there, on its thirty-seated Slope ; leaning, one 
would say, on the thick umbrage of those Avenue- 
Trees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height ; 
and all beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth, 
with the gleams of waters, or white sparklings of stone- 
edifices: little circular enamel-picture in the centre of 
such a vase — of emerald ! A vase not empty : the In- 
valides Cupolas want not their population, nor the dis- 
tant Windmills of Montmartre ; on remotest steeple and 
invisible village belfry, stand men with spy-glasses. On 
the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured undulating 
groups ; round and far-on, over all the circling heights 
that embosom Paris, it is as one more or less peopled 
Amphitheatre; which the eye grows dim with measur- 
ing. Nay heights, as was before hinted, have cannon ; 
and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine. When 
eye fails, ear shall serve ; and all France properly is but 
one Amphitheatre ; for in paved town and unpaved 
hamlet, men walk listening ; till the muffled thunder 
sound audible on their horizon, that they too may be- 
gin swearing and firing. But now, to streams of music, 
come Federates enough, — for they have assembled on 
the Boulevard Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come 
marching through the City, with their Eighty-three De- 
partment Banners, and blessings not loud but deep ; 
comes National Assembly, and takes seat under its 
Canopy ; comes Royalty, and takes seat on a throne be- 
side it. And Lafayette, on white charger, is here, and 



HISTORICAL AND .MISCELLAM.OUS. ^4! 

all the civic Functionaries ; and the Federates form 
dances, till their strictly military evolutions and manoeu- 
vres can begin. 

Evolutions and manoeuvres ? Task not the pen of 
mortal to describe them : truant imagination droops ; — 
declares that it is not worth while. There is wheeling 
and sweeping, to slow, to quick and double-quick time : 
Sieur Motier, or Generalissimo Lafayette, for they are 
one and the same, and he is General of France, in the 
King's stead, for four-and-twenty hours; Sieur Motier 
must step forth, with that sublime chivalrous gait of 
his ; solemnly ascend the steps of the Fatherland's Al- 
tar, in sight of Heaven and of the scarcely breathing 
Earth ; and, under the creak of those swinging Casso- 
lettes, "pressing his sword's point firmly there," pro- 
nounce the Oath, To King, to Law, and Nation (not to 
mention "grains" with their circulating), in his own 
name and that of armed France. Whereat there is 
waving of banners, and acclaim sufficient. The National 
Assembly must swear, standing in its place ; the King 
himself audibly. The King swears ; and now be the 
welkin split with vivats : let citizens enfranchised em- 
brace, each smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's ; 
and armed I'ederates clang their arms ; above all, that 
floating battery speak ! It has spoken, — to the four 
corners of France. From eminence to eminence bursts 
the thunder; faint-heard, loud-repeated. What a stone, 
cast into what a lake ; in circles that do not grow faint- 
er. From Arras to Avignon ; from Metz to Bayonne ! 
(Dver Orleans and Blois it rolls, in cannon-recitative; 
Puy bellows of it amid his granite mountains ; Pau 
where is the shell-cradle of Great Henri. At far Mar- 
seilles, one can think, the ruddy evening witnesses it; 
over the deep blue Mediterranean waters, the Castle of 
If ruddy-tinted darts forth, from every cannon's mouth, 
its tongue of fire ; and all the people shout : Yes, France 
is free. O glorious France, that has burst out so ; into 



34^ 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



universal sound and smoke ; and attained — the Phrygian 
Cap of Liberty ! In all Towns, Trees of Liberty also 
may be planted ; with or without advantage. Said we 
not, it was the highest stretch attained by the Thespian 
Art on this Planet, or perhaps attainable ? 

The Thespian Art, unfortunately, one must still call 
it ; for behold there, on this Field of Mars, the National 
Banners, before there could be any swearing, were to 
be all blessed. A most proper operation ; since surely 
without Heaven's blessing bestowed, say even, audibly 
or inaudibly sought, no Earthly banner or contrivance 
can prove victorious : but now the means of doing it ? 
By what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall mirac- 
ulous fire be drawn out of Heaven ; and descend 
gently, lifegiving, with health to the souls of men ? 
Alas, by the simplest : by Two Hundred shaven- 
crowned Individuals, "in snow-white albs, with tricolor 
girdles," arranged on the steps of Fatherland's Altar; 
and, at their head for Spokesman, Soul's- Overseer Tal- 
leyrand-Perigord ! These shall act as miraculous thun- 
der-rod, — to such length as they can. O ye deep azure 
Heavens, and thou green all-nursing Earth ; ye Streams 
ever-flowing ; deciduous Forests that die and are born 
again, continually, like the sons of men ; stone Moun- 
tains that die daily with every rain-shower, yet are not 
dead and levelled for ages of ages, nor born again (it 
seems) but with new world-explosions, and such tumul- 
tuous seething and tumbling, steam halfway to the 
Moon ; O thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and 
dwellingplace of the UNNAMED ; and thou, articulate- 
speaking Spirit of Man, who mouldest and modellest 
that Unfathomable Unnameable even as we see, — is not 
there a miracle : That some PVench mortal should, we 
say not have believed, but pretended to imagine he be- 
lieved that Talleyrand and Two Hundred pieces of 
white Calico could do it ! 

Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 343 

Historians of that day, that suddenly, while Episcopus 
Talleyrand, long-stoled, with mitre and tricolor belt, 
was yet but hitching up the Altar-steps to do his mira- 
cle, the material Heaven grew black ; a north-wind, 
moaning cold moisture, began to sing ; and there de- 
scended a very deluge of rain. Sad to see I The 
thirty-staired Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get 
instantaneously slated with mere umbrellas, fallacious 
when so thick set : our antique Cassolettes become 
water- pots ; their incense-smoke gone hissing, in a 
whifif of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vivats, there 
is nothing now but the furious peppering and rattling. 
From three to four hundred thousand human individu- 
als feel that they have a skin ; happily /wpervious. The 
General's sash runs water : how all military banners 
droop ; and will not wave, but lazily flap, as if meta- 
morphosed into painted tin-banners ! Worse, far worse, 
these hundred thousand, such is the Historian's testi- 
mony, of the fairest of France ! Their snowy muslins 
all splashed and draggled ; the ostrich-feather shrunk 
shamefully to the backbone of a feather : all caps are 
ruined ; innermost paste-board molten into its original 
pap : Beauty no longer swims decorated in her garni- 
ture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian 
clouds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, 
for "the shape was noticeable;" and now only sympa- 
thetic interjections, titterings, teeheeings, and resolute 
good-humour will avail. A deluge ; an incessant sheet 
or fluid-column of rain ; — such that our Overseer's 
very mitre must be filled ; not a mitre, but a filled and 
leaky fire-bucket on his reverend head ! — Regardless 
of which. Overseer Talleyrand performs his miracle : 
the Blessing of Talleyrand, another than that of Jacob, 
is on all the Eighty-three departmental flags of France ; 
which wave or flap, with such thankfulness as needs. 
Towards three o'clock, the sun beams out again : the 
remaining evolutions can be transacted under bright 
heavens, though with decorations much damaged. 



344 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



On Wednesday our Federation is consummated : but 
the festivities last out the week, and over into the next. 
Festivities such as no Bagdad Caliph, or Aladdin with 
the Lamp, could have equalled. There is a Jousting 
on the River ; with its water-somersets, splashing and 
haha-ing: Abbe Fauchet, Te Deitm Fauchet, preaches, 
for his part, in the "rotunda of the Corn-market," a 
funeral harangue on Franklin ; for whom the National 
Assembly has lately gone three days in black. The 
Motier and Lepelletier tables still groan with viands ; 
roofs ringing with patriotic toasts. On the fifth even- 
ing, which is the Christian Sabbath, there is a univer- 
sal Ball. Paris, out of doors and in, man, woman and 
child, is jigging it, to the sound of harp and four- 
stringed fiddle. The hoariest-headed man will tread 
one other measure, under this nether Moon ; speechless 
nurselings, infants as we call them, vj'iitia rhiva, crow 
in arms ; and sprawl out numb-plump little limbs, — 
impatient for muscularity, they know not why. The 
stiffest balk bends more or less ; all joists creek. 

Or out, on the Earth's breast itself, behold the Ruins 
of the Bastille. All lamplit, allegorically decorated ; a 
Tree of Liberty sixty feet high ; and Phrygian Cap on 
it, of size enormous, under which King Arthur and his 
round-table might have dined ! In the depths of the 
background is a single lugubrious lamp, rendering dim- 
visible one of your iron cages, half-buried, and some 
Prison stones, — Tyranny vanishing downwards, all gone 
but the skirt: the rest wholly lamp-festoons, trees real 
or of pasteboard ; in the similitude of a fairy grove ; 
with this inscription, readable to runner: ''Ici l' on 
dance, Dancing Here." As indeed had been obscurely 
foreshadowed by Cagliostro, prophetic Quack of Quacks, 
when he, four years ago, quitted the grim durance ; — 
to fall into a grimmer, of the Roman Inquisition, and 
not quit it. 

But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



345 



the Champs Elysees ! Thither, to these Fields well 
named Elysian, all feet tend. It is radiant as day with 
festooned lamps ; little oil-cups, like variegated fire-flies, 
daintly illume the highest leaves : trees there are all 
sheeted with variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer 
into the dubious wood. There, under the free sky, do 
tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound sweet- 
hearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and 
tart humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all 
through the ambrosial night ; and hearts were touched 
and fired ; and seldom surely had our old Planet, in that 
huge conic Shadow of hers "which goes beyond the 
Moon, and is named Night,'" curtained such a Ball- 
room. O if, according to Seneca, the very gods look 
down on a good man struggling with adversity, and 
smile ; what must they think of Five-and-twenty million 
different ones victorious over it, — for eight days and 
more? —F- A'., P. II., ii, 12. 

THE SWISS. 
Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded ! 
Lo ye, how with the first sunrays its Ocean-tide, of 
pikes and fusils, flows glittering from the far East, — 
immeasurable; born of the Night ! They march there, 
the grim host ; Saint-Antoine on this side the River ; 
Saint- Marceau on that, the blackbrowed Marseillese in 
the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard ; 
like the Ocean-tide, as we say : drawn up, as if by 
Luna and Influences, from the great Deep of Waters, 
they roll gleaming on ; no King, Canute or Louis, can 
bid them roll back. W^ide-eddying side-currents, of 
onlookers, roll hither and thither, unarmed, not voice- 
less ; they, the steel host, roll on. New-Commandant 
Santerre, indeed, has taken seat at the Townhall ; rests 
there, in his halfway-house. Alsatian Westermann, 
with flashing sabre, does not rest ; nor the Sections, nor 
the Marseillese, nor Demoiselle Theroigne ; but roll 
continually on. 



346 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



And now, where are Mandat's Squadrons that were 
to charge? Not a Squadron of them stirs : or they stir 
in the wrong direction, out of the way ; their officer? 
glad that they will even do that. It is to this hour un- 
certain whether the Squadron on the Pont-Neuf made 
the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow: 
enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-Marceau 
following them, do cross without let ; do cross, in sure 
hope now of Saint- Antoine and the rest; do billow on,- 
towards the Tuileries, where their errand is. The Tui- 
leries, at sound of them, rustles responsive : the red 
Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in black draw 
their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even 
fire-shovels ; every man his weapon of war. 

Judge if, in these circumstances. Syndic Roederer felt 
easy ! Will the kind Heavens open no middle-course 
of refuge for a poor Syndic who halts between two ? 
If indeed his Majesty would consent to go over to the 
Assembly ! His Majesty , above all her Majesty, cannot 
agree to that. Did her Majesty answer the proposal 
with a '* Fi done ;" d\d she say even, she would be 
nailed to the walls sooner? Apparently not. It is 
written also that she offered the King a pistol ; saying, 
Now or else never was the time to show himself Close 
eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. They saw only 
that she was queenlike,, quiet ; that she argued not, 
upbraided not, with the Inexorable ; but like Caisar in 
the Capitol, wrapped her mantle, as it beseems Queens 
and Sons of Adam to do. But thou, O Louis ! of what 
stuff art thou at all ? Is there no stroke in thee, then, 
for Life and Crown ? The silliest hunted deer dies not 
so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals ; or the 
mildest-minded ? Thou art the worst-starred. 

The tide advances ; Syndic Roederer's and all men's 
straits grow straiter and straiten P'remescent clangor 
comes from the armed Nationals in the Court ; far and 
wide is the infinite hubbub of tongues. What counsel? 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



ZA7 



And the tide is now nigh ! Messengers, forerunners 
speak hastily through the outer Grates ; hold parley 
sitting astride the walls. Syndic Roederer goes out and 
comes in. Cannoneers ask him: Are we to fire against 
the people ? King's Ministers ask him : Shall the 
King's house be forced ? Syndic Roederer has a hard 
game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers with elo- 
quence, with fervour; such fervour as a man can, who 
has to blow hot and cold in one breath. Hot and cold, 
O Roederer ? We for our part cannot live and die ! 
The Cannoneers by way of answer, fling down their 
hnstock^. — Think of this answer, O King Louis, and 
King's Ministers; and take a poor Syndic's safe middle- 
course towards the Salle de Manege. King Louis sits, 
his hands leant on his knees, body bent forward ; gazes 
for a space fixedly on Syndic Roederer ; then answers, 
looking over his shoulder to the Queen : Marchons ! 
They march ; King Lo.uis, Queen, Sister Elizabeth, 
the two royal children and governess : these, with 
Syndic Roederer, and Officials of the Department ; 
amid a double rank of National Guards. The men 
with blunderbusses, the steady red Swiss gaze mourn- 
fully, reproachfully ; but hear only these words from 
Syndic Roederer: "The King is going to the Assem- 
bly; make way." It has struck eight, on all clocks, 
some minutes ago : the King has left the Tuileries — 
forever. 

On ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, 
for what a cause are ye to spend and be spent ! Look 
out from the western windows, ye may see King Louis 
placidly hold on his way; the poor little Prince Royal 
"sportfully kicking the fallen leaves." Fremescent mul- 
titude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls parallel 
to him ; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole : 
will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back- 
entrance of the Salle, when it comes to that? King's 
Guards can go no further than the bottom step there. 



348 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Lo, Deputation of Legislators come out ; he of the long 
pole is stilled by oratory ; Assembly's Guards join 
themselves to King's Guards, and all may mount in this 
case of necessity ; the outer Staircase is free, or passa- 
ble. See, Royalty ascends ; a blue Grenadier lifts the 
poor little Prince Royal from the press ; Royalty has 
entered in. Royalty has vanished forever from your 
eyes. — And ye ? Left standing there amid the yawning 
abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection ; without 
course ; without command : if ye perish, it must be as 
more than martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a 
cause ! The black Courtiers disappear mostly ; through 
such issues as they can. The poor Swiss know not how 
to act : one duty only is clear to them, that of standing 
by their post ; and they will perform that. 

But the glittering steel tide has arrived ; it beats now 
against the Chateau barriers, and eastern Courts; irre- 
sistible, loud-surging far and wide ; — breaks in, fills the 
Court of the Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the 
van. King Louis gone, say you ; over to the Assem- 
bly ! Well and good : but till the Assembly pronounce 
Forfeiture of him, what boots it ? Our post is in that 
Chateau or stronghold of his ; there till then must M^e 
continue. Think ye, stanch Swiss, whether it were 
good that grim murder began, and brothers blasted one 
another in pieces for a stone edifice? — Poor Swiss! they 
know not how to act : from the southern windows, some 
fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood ; on the eastern 
outer staircase, and within through long stairs and cor- 
ridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet re- 
fusing to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian 
German ; Marseillese plead, in hot Proven9al speech and 
pantomime ; stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, in- 
finite, around. The Swiss stand fast, peaceable and 
yet immovable ; red granite pier in that waste-flashing 
sea of steel. 

Who can help the inevitable issue ; Marseillese and 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



349 



all France, on this side ; granite Swiss on that ? The 
pantomime grows hotter and hotter ; Marseillese sabres 
flourishing by way of action ; the Swiss brow also 
clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its firelock ta 
the cock. And hark ! high thundering above all the 
din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, point- 
ed by a gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the 
roofs! Ye Swiss, therefore: Fh'c ! The Swiss fire; by 
volley, by platoon, in rolling-fire : Marseillese men not 
a few, and "a tall man that was louder than any," lie 
silent, smashed upon the pavement ; — not a few Mar- 
seillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt 
here. The Carrousel is void ; the black tide recoiling ; 
"fugitives rushing as far as Saint- Antoine before they 
stop." The Cannoneers without linstock have squatted 
invisible, and left their cannon ; which the Swiss seize. 
Think what a volley : reverberating doomful to the 
four corners of Paris, and through all hearts ; like the 
clang of Bellona's thongs ! The blackbrowed Marseil- 
lese, rallying on the instant, have become black Demons 
that know how to die. Nor is Brest behindhand ; nor 
Alsatian Westermann ; Demoiselle Theroigne is Sybil 
Theroigne : Vengeance, Victoirc on la mart ! From 
all Patriot artillery, great and small ; from Feuillants 
Terrace, and all terraces and places of the wide-spread 
Insurrectionary sea, there roars responsive a red blazing 
whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in the Garden, 
cannot help their muskets going off, against F"oreign 
murderers. For there is a sympathy in muskets, in 
heaped masses of men ; nay, are not Mankind, in 
whole, like tuned strings, and a cunning infinite con- 
cordance and unity ; you smite one string, and all 
strings will begin sounding, — in soft sphere-melody, in 
deafening screech of madness ! Mounted Gendarmerie 
gallop distracted; are fired on merely as a thing run- 
ning ; galloping over the Pont Royal, or one knows 
not whither. The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the 



3SO 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



centre of it here, has gone mad ; what you call, taken 
fire. 

Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss 
rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay they clutched 
cannon, as we saw ; and now, from the other side, they 
clutch three piece? more; alas, cannon without linstock; 
nor will the steel-and-flint answer, though they try it. 
Had it chanced to answer ! Patriot onlookers have 
their misgivings ; one strangest Patriot onlooker thinks 
that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. 
He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him 
Napoleon Buonaparte. And onlookers, and women, 
stand gazing, and the witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow 
among them, on the other side of the River : cannon 
rush rumbling past them ; pause on the Pont Royal ; 
belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries ; 
and at every new belch, the women and onlookers 
"shout and clap hands." City of all the Devils! In 
remote streets, men are drinking breakfast- coffee ; fol- 
lowing their affairs; with a start now and then, as some 
dull echo reverberates a note louder. And here ? 
Marseillese fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons; 
Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand, 
and under cover. Marseillese fall death-struck ; be- 
queath their firelock, specify in which pocket are the 
cartridges; and die, murmuring, "Revenge me. Re- 
venge thy country!" Brest Federe Officers, galloping 
in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel 
has burst into flame ! — Paris Pandemonium ! Nay the 
poor City, as we said, is in fever-fit and convulsion : 
such crisis has lasted for the space of some half hour. 

But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, vent- 
ures through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back- 
entrance of the Manege ? Towards the Tuileries and 
Swiss : written Order from his Majesty to cease firing ! 
O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no order not to be- 
gin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but who 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



351 



will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection 
you cannot speak ; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. 
The dead and dying, by the hundred, lie all around ; 
are borne bleeding through the streets, towards help ; 
the sight of them, like a torch of the Furies, kindling 
Madness. Patriot Paris roars ; as the bear bereaved 
of her whelps. On, ye Patriots: Vengeance! Victory 
or death ! There are men seen, who rush on, armed 
only with walking-sticks. Terror and Fury rule the 
hour. 

The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralysed from 
within, have ceased to shoot ; but not to be shot. What 
shall they do ? Desperate is the moment. Shelter or 
instant death : yet How, Where ? One party flies out 
by the Rue de I'Echelle; is destroyed utterly, ^'en eritier." 
A second, by the other side, throws itself into the 
Garden; "hurrying across a keen fusillade;" rushes 
suppliant into the National Assembly ; finds pity and 
refuge in the back benches there. The third, and larg- 
est, darts put in column, three hundred strong, towards 
the Champs Elysees : Ah, could we but reach Courbe- 
voye, where other Swiss are! Wo! see, in such fusil- 
lade the column "soon breaks itself by diversity of 
opinion," into distracted segments, this way and that; 
— to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street. 
The firing and murdering will not cease ; not yet for 
long. The red Porters of Hotels are shot at, be they 
Suisse by nature, or Suisse only in name. The very 
Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking Car- 
rousel, are shot at: why should the Carrousel Jtot burn? 
Some Swiss take refuge in private houses ; find that 
mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man. The 
brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and labour 
to save. Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with infuriated 
groups. Clemence, the Wine-merchant, stumbles for- 
ward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in 
his hand; tells passionately how he rescued him with 



352 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



pain and peril, how he will henceforth support him, 
being childless himself; and falls a-swoon round the 
poor Swiss's neck : amid plaudits. But the most are 
butchered, and even mangled. Fifty (some say Four- 
score) were marched as prisoners, by National Guards, 
to the H6tel-de-Ville : the ferocious people bursts 
through on them, in the Place-de-Greve ; massacres 
them to the last man. " O Pcnple, envy of the uni- 
verse I " Peuplc, in mad Gaelic effervescence ! 

Surely few things in the history of carnage are pain- 
fuller. What ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad 
in the memory, is that, of this poor column of red Swiss 
"breaking itself in the confusion of opinions;" dispers- 
ing, into blackness and death ! Honour to you, brave 
men; honourable pity, through long times! Not mar- 
tyrs were ye ; and yet almost more. He was no King 
of yours, this Louis ; and he forsook you like a King 
of shreds and patches : ye were but sold to him for 
some poor sixpence a-day ; yet would ye work for your 
wages, keep your plighted word. The work now was 
to die ; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen ; 
and may the old Deutche Bicderkeit and Tapferkeit, 
and Valour which is Worth and Truth, be they Swiss, 
be they Saxon, fail in no age ! Not bastards ; true- 
born were these men ; sons of the men of Sempach, of 
Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O Burgundy ! — 
Let the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn 
aside to look a little at their monumental Lion : not 
for Thorwaldsen's sake alone. Hewn out of living 
rock, the Figure rests there, by the still Lake-waters, 
in lullaby of distant-tinkling rance-des-vaches, the gran- 
ite Mountains dumbly keeping watch all round ; and, 
though inanimate, speaks. — /'. R., P. IL, B. VI. 7. 

CHARLOTTE CORDAY. 

Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, His- 
tory specially notices one thing : in the lobby of the 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



353 



Mansion de V Intendance, where busy Deputies are 
coming and going, a young Lady with an aged valet, 
taking grave graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux. She 
is of stately Norman figure; in her twenty-fifth year; 
of beautiful still countenance : her name is Charlotte 
Corday, heretofore styled D'Armans, while nobility still 
was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy Du- 
perret, — him who once drew his sword in the efferves- 
cence. Apparently she will to Paris on some errand ? 
"She was a Republican before the Revolution, and 
never wanted energy." A completeness, a decision is 
in this fair female Figure: "by energy she means the 
spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice himself for his 
country." What if she, this fair young Charlotte, had 
emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a 
Star; cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-demonic splen- 
dour ; to gleam for a moment, and in a moment be ex- 
tinguished : to be held in memory, so bright complete 
was she, through long centuries ! — Quitting Cimmerian 
Coalitions without, and the dim-simmering Twenty-five 
millions within. History will look fixedly at this one fair 
Apparition of a Charlotte Corday ; will note whither 
Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so ra- 
diant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night. 

With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight 
stock of luggage, we see Charlotte on Tuesday the ninth 
of July seated in the Caen Diligence, with a place for 
Paris. None takes farewell of her, wishes her Good- 
journey : her father will find a line left, signifying that 
she is gone to Englancj, that he must pardon her, and 
forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along ; amid 
drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain ; in 
which she mingles not : all night, all day, and again all 
night. On Thursday, not long before noon, we are at 
the bridge of Neuilly ; here is Paris with her thousand 
black domes, the goal and purpose of thy journey ! 
Arrived at the Inn de la Providence in the Rue des 
23 



354 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room ; hastens 
to bed ; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow 
morning. 

On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to 
Duperret. It relates to certain Family Papers which 
are in the Minister of the Interior's hand ; which a Nun' 
at Caen, an old Convent-friend of Charlotte's, has need 
of; which Duperret shall assist her in getting : this then 
was Charlotte's errand to Paris ? She has finished this, 
in the course of Friday ; — yet says nothing of returning. 
She has seen and silently investigated several things. 
The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen ; what 
the Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of 
Marat she could not see ; he is sick at present, and con- 
fined to home. 

About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases 
a large sheath-knife in the Palais Royal ; then straight- 
way, in the Place des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach : 
"To the Rue de I'Ecole de Medecine, No. 44." It is 
the residence of the Citoyen Marat ! — The Citoyen 
Marat is ill, and cannot be seen ; which seems to disap- 
point her much. Her business is with Marat, then ? 
Hapless beautiful Charlotte ; hapless squalid Marat ! 
From Caen in the utmost West, from Neuchatel in the 
utmost East, they two are drawing nigh each other ; 
they two have, very strangely, business together. — 
Charlotte, returning to her Inn, despatches a short Note 
to Marat ; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of 
rebellion ; that she desires earnestly to see him, and 
"will put it in his power to do France a great service." 
No answer. Charlotte writes another Note, still more 
pressing ; sets out with it by coach, about seven in the 
evening, herself Tired day-labourers have again fin- 
ished their Week ; huge Paris is circling and simmering, 
manifold, according to its vague wont : this one fair 
Figure has decision in it ; drives straight, — towards a 
purpose. 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



355 



It is yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of 
the month; eve of the Bastille day, — when "M. Marat," 
four years ago, in the crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly 
required of that Besenval Hussar-party, which had such 
friendly dispositions, " to dismount, and give up their 
arms, then;" and became notable among Patriot men. 
Four years: what a road he has travelled; — and sits 
now, about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in 
slipper-bath ; sore afflicted ; ill of Revolution Fever, — 
of what other malady this History had rather not 
name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man : with 
precisely eleven-pence-halfpenny of ready money, in 
paper ; with slipper-bath ; strong three-footed stool for 
writing on, the while ; and a squalid — Washerwoman, 
one may call her : that is his civic establishment in 
Medical-School Street ; thither and not elsewhither has 
his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood and 
Perfect Felicity ; yet surely on the way towards that ? 
— Hark, a rap again 1 A musical woman's- voice, re- 
fusing to be rejected : it is the Citoyenne who would do 
France a service. Marat, recognising from within, 
cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is admitted. 

Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, 
and wished to speak with you. — Be seated, inon enfant. 
Now what are the traitors doing at Caen ? What Depu- 
ties are at Caen ? — Charlotte names some Deputies. 
"Their heads shall fall within a fortnight," croaks the 
eager People's- Friend, clutching his tablets to write : 
Barbaroux, Petion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, 
turning aside in the bath : Pctioji, and Louvet, and — 
Charlotte has drawn her knife from the sheath ; plunges 
it, with one sure stroke, into the writer's heart, "yi 
moi, chore amie, Help, dear ! " no more could the 
Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washerwo- 
man running in, there is no Friend of the People, or 
Friend of the Washerwoman left ; but his life with a 
groan gushes out, indignant, to the shades below. 



356 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



And so Marat People's-Friend is ended ; the lone 
Stylites has got hurled down suddenly from his Pillar, 
— whitherward He that made him knows. Patriot 
Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole and wail ; 
re-echoed by Patriot France ; and the Convention, 
"Chabot pale w^ith terror, declaring that they are to be 
all assassinated," may decree him Pantheon Honours, 
Public Funeral, Mirabeau's dust making way for him ; 
and Jacobin Societies, in lamentable oratory, summing 
up his character, parallel him to One, whom they think 
it honour to call "the good Sansculotte," — whom we 
name not here ; also a Chapel may be made, for the 
urn that holds his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel ; 
and new-born children be named Marat ; and Lago-di- 
Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco into unbeau- 
tiful Busts ; and David paint his Picture, or Death- 
Scene ; and such other Apotheosis take place as the 
human genius, in these circumstances, can devise ; but 
Marat returns no more to the light of this Sun. One 
sole circumstance we have read with clear sympathy, 
in the old Moniteiir Newspaper : how Marat's Brother 
comes from Neuchatel to ask of the Convention, "that 
the deceased Jean-Paul Marat's musket be given him." 
For Marat too had a brother, and natural affections ; 
and was wrapt once in swaddling-clothes, and slept safe 
in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men ! — 
A sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris. 

As for Charlotte Corday, her work is accomplished ; 
the recompense of it is near and sure. The chere aniie, 
and neighbours of the house, flying at her, she "over- 
turns some moveables," entrenches herself till the gend- 
armes arrive ; then quietly surrenders ; goes quietly to 
the Abbaye Prison : she alone quiet, all Paris sounding, 
in wonder, in rage or admiration, round her. Duperret 
is put in arrest, on account of her ; his Papers sealed, 
— which may lead to consequences. P'auchet, in like 
manner, though Fauchet had not so much as heard of 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



35/ 



her. Charlotte, confronted with these two Deputies, 
praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the 
dejection of Fauchet. 

On Wednesday morning, the thronged Palais de Jus- 
tice and Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face ; 
beautiful and calm : she dates it " fourth day of the 
Preparation of Peace." A strange murmur ran through 
the Hall, at sight of her ; you could not say of what 
character. Tinville has his indictments and tape-papers: 
the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold 
her the sheath-knife ; " all these details are needless," 
interrupted Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat." By 
whose instigation? — "By no one's." What tempted 
you then? His crimes. "I killed one man," added 
she, raising her voice extremely (extremement), as they 
went on with their questions, " I killed one man to save 
a hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a sav- 
age wild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a 
Republican before the Revolution; I never wanted en- 
ergy." There is therefore nothing to be said. The 
public gazes astonished : the hasty limners sketch her 
features, Charlotte not disapproving; the men of law 
proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as 
a murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in 
gentle phrase, in high-flown classical spirit. To the 
Priest they send her she gives thanks ; but needs not 
any shriving, any ghostly or other aid from him. 

On this same evening therefore, about half-past seven 
o'clock, from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all 
on tiptoe, the fatal Cart issues ; seated on it a fair young 
creature, sheeted in red smock of Murderess; so beauti- 
ful, serene, so full of life; journeying towards death, — 
alone amid the World. Many take off their hats, 
saluting reverently ; for what heart but must be 
touched ? Others growl and howl. Adam Lux, of 
Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus ; that 
it were beautiful to die with her : the head of this 



358 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



young man seems turned. At the Place de la Revolu- 
tion, the countenance of Charlotte wears the same still 
smile. The executioners proceed to bind her feet; she 
resists, thinking it meant as an insult ; on a word of 
explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As 
the last act, all being now ready, they'take the necker- 
chief from her neck ; a blush of maidenly shame over- 
spreads that fair face and neck ; the cheeks were still 
tinged with it when the executioner lifted the severed 
head, to show it to the people. "It is most true," 
says Forster, "that he struck the cheek insultingly; for 
I saw it with my eyes : the Police imprisoned him 
for it." 

In this manner have the Beautifullest and the Squalid- 
est come in collision, and extinguished one another. 
Jean-Paul Marat and Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday 
both, suddenly, are no more. " Day of the Preparation 
of Peace?" Alas, how were peace possible or prepara- 
ble, while, for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, 
in their convent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love- 
paradises, and the light of Life; but of Codrus'-sacri- 
fices, and Death well-earned? That Twenty-five mil- 
lion hearts have got to such a temper, this is the 
Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this: whereof not peace 
can be the embodiment! The death of Marat, whetting 
old animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O 
ye hapless Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and 
the Squalid, sleep ye well, — in the Mother's bosom that 
bore you both I 

This is the History of Charlotte Corday ; most defi- 
nite, most complete; angelic-demonic: like a Star! 
Adam Lux goes home, half delirious ; to pour forth 
his Apotheosis of her, in paper and print ; to propose 
that she have a statue with this inscription, Gtratcr 
than Briitiis. Friends represent his danger; Lux is 
reckless ; thinks it were beautiful to die with her. 
^F. R., P. III., B. IV. I. 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



DEATH OF MARIE ANTOINETTE. 



359 



Beautiful High-born that wert so foully hurled low ! 
— Oh, is there a man's heart that thinks, without pity, 
of those long months and years of slow wasting igno- 
miny ; — of thy Birth, soft-cradled in Imperial Schon- 
brunn, the winds of heaven not to visit thy face too 
roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy eye on splen- 
dour ; and then of thy Death, or hundred Deaths, to 
which the Guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment- 
bar was but the merciful end? Look there, O man 
born of woman ! The bloom of that fair face is wasted, 
the hair is gray with care ; the brightness of those eyes 
is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony 
pale, as of one living in death. Mean weeds, which her 
own hand has mended, attire the Queen of the World. 
The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale motionless, 
which only curses environ, has to stop: a people, drunk 
with vengeance, will drink it again in full draught, 
looking at thee there. Far as the eye reaches, a mul- 
titudinous sea of maniac heads ; the air deaf with their 
triumph-yell ! The Living-dead must shudder with yet 
one other pang ; her startled blood yet again suffuses 
with the hue of agony that pale face, which she hides 
with her hands. There is then 7w heart to say, God 
pity thee ? O think not of these ; think of HiM whom 
thou worshippest, the Crucified, — who also treading 
the wine-press alone, fronted sorrow still deeper; and 
triumphed over it, and made it holy ; and built of it a 
'Sanctuary of Sorrow,' for thee and all the wretched! 
Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look 
at the Tuileries, where thy step was once so light, — 
where thy children shall not dwell. The head is on the 
block ; the axe rushes — Dumb lies the World ; that 
wild-yelling World, and all its madness is behind thee 

— M. Diamond Necklace. 



360 



THE CARLVLE ANTHOLOGY. 



DEA TH OF MADAM ROLAND. 



A FAR nobler* Victim follows ; and who will claim re- 
membrance from several centuries: Jeanne- Marie Phli- 
pon, the Wife of Roland. Queenly, sublime in her un- 
complaining sorrow, seemed she to Riouffe in her Prison. 
" Something more than is usually found in the looks 
of women painted itself," says Riouffe, "in those large 
black eyes of hers, full of, expression and sweetness. 
She spoke to me often, at the Grate: we were all attent- 
ive round her, in a sort of admiration and astonish- 
ment ; she expressed herself with a purity, with a 
harmony and prosody that made her language like 
music, of which the ear could never have enough. Her 
conversation was serious not cold ; coming from the 
mouth of a beautiful woman, it was frank and coura- 
geous as that of a great man." "And yet her maid 
said '. ' Before you, she collects her strength ; but in 
her own room, she will sit three hours sometimes lean- 
ing on the window, and weeping.'" She has been in 
Prison, liberated once, but recaptured the same hour, 
ever since the first of June: in agitation and uncertainty; 
which has gradually settled down into the last stern 
certainty, that of death. In the Abbaye Prison, she 
occupied Chark)tte Corday's apartment. Here in the 
Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe, with Ex- Minister 
Claviere ; calls the beheaded Twenty-two '' Nos amis, 
our Friends," — whom we are soon to follow. During 
these five months, those Memoirs of hers were written, 
which all the world still reads. 

But now, on the 8th of November, "clad in white," 
says Riouffe, "with her long black hair hanging down 
to her girdle," she is gone to the Judgment-bar. She 
leturned with a quick step; lifted her finger, to signify 
to us that she was doomed : her eyes seemed to have 
been wet. Fouquier Tinville's questions had been 
"brutal;" offended female honour flung them back on 

'Than Phillpoe E^alit^. 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



361 



him, with scorn, not without tears. And now, short 
preparation soon done, she too shaU go her last road. 
There went with her a certain Lamarche, "Director of 
Assignat-printing; " whose dejection she endeavoured 
to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she asked 
for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that 
were rising in her:" a remarkable request; which was 
refused. Looking at the Statue of Liberty which stands 
there, she says bitterly: "O Liberty, what things are 
done in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake, she will 
die first; show him how easy it is to die : "Contrary to 
the order," said Samson. — "Pshaw, you pannot refuse 
the last request of a Lady;" and Samson yielded. 

Noble white Vision, with its high queenly face, its 
soft proud eyes, long black hair flowing down to the 
girdle ; and as brave a heart as ever beat in woman's 
bosom ! Like a white Grecian Statue, serenely com- 
plete, she shines in that black wreck of things ; — long 
memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris 
City, in the Era of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, 
can make a Jeanne Phlipon, and nourish her to clear 
perennial Womanhood, though but on Logics, Eiicyclo- 
pedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques ! 
Biography will long remember that trait of asking for 
a pen "to write the strange thoughts that were rising 
in her." It is as a little light-beam, shedding softness, 
and a kind of sacredness, over all that preceded : so in 
her too there was an Unnameable ; she too was a 
Daughter of the Infinite ; there were mysteries which 
Philosophism had not dreamt of! —F. R., P. III., B. V. 2. 

THE END OF ROBESPIERRE. 

Tallien'S eyes beamed bright, on the morrow. Ninth 
of Thermidor " about nine o'clock," to see that the 
Convention had actually met. Paris is in rumour : but 
at least we are met, in Legal Convention here ; we have 
not been snatched seriatim ; treated with a Pride's 



362 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



Purge at the door. *' Allons, brave men of the Plain," 
late Frogs of the Marsh! cried Tallien with a squeeze 
of the hand, as he passed in; Saint- Just's sonorous 
voice being now audible from the Tribune, and the 
game of games begun. 

Saint-Just is verily reading that Report of his; green 
Vengeance, in the shape of Robespierre, watching 
nigh. Behold, however, Saint- Just has read but few 
sentences, when interruption rises, rapid crescendo; 
when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud, and this 
man starts and that, — and Tallien, a second time, with 
his: "Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled 
for the Republic. I said to myself, if the Convention 
dare not strike the Tyrant, then I myself dare ; and 
with this I will do it, if need be," said he, whisking out 
a clear- gleaming Dagger, and brandishing it there: the 
Steel of Brutus, as we call it. Whereat we all bellow, 
and brandish, impetuous acclaim. "Tyranny! Dicta- 
torship! Triumvirate!" And the Saint Committee- 
men accuse, and all men accuse, and uproar, and impet- 
uously acclaim. And Saint- Just is standing motionless, 
pale of face; Couthon ejaculating, "Triumvir?" with a 
look at his paralytic legs. And Robespierre is strug- 
gling to speak, but President Thuriot is jingling the bell 
against him, but the Hall is sounding against him like 
an ^olus-Hall; and Robespierre is mounting the Trib- 
une-steps and descending again; going and coming, 
like to choke with rage, terror, desperation: — and mu- 
tiny is the order of the day! 

O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, 
and from the Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine 
rising like the Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, 
sawest thou ever the like of this ? Jingle of bell, which 
thou jinglest against Robespierre, is hardly audible amid 
the Bedlam-storm; and men rage for hfe. "President 
of Assassins," shrieks Robespierre, "I demand speech 
of thee for the last time!" It cannot be had. "To 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



36: 



you, O virtuous men of the Plain," cries he, finding 
audience one moment, "I appeal to you!" The virtu- 
ous men of th.e Plain sit silent as stones. And Thuri- 
ot's bell jingles, and the Hall sounds like yEolus's Hall. 
Robespierre's frothing lips are grown "blue;" his tongue 
dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth. "The blood 
of Danton chokes him," cry they. "Accusation! De- 
cree of Accusation ! " Thuriot swiftly puts that question. 
Accusation passes ; the incorruptible Maximilien is de- 
creed Accused. 

" I demand to share my Brother's fate, as I have 
striven to share his virtues," cries Augustin, the 
Younger Robespierre : Augustin also is decreed. And 
Couthon, and Saint-Just, and Lebas, they are all de- 
creed; and packed forth, — not without difficulty, the 
Ushers almost trembling to obey. Triumvirate and 
Company are packed forth, into Saint Committee- 
room; their tongue cleaving to the roof of their mouth. 
You have but to summon the Municipality ; to cashier 
Commandant Henriot, and launch Arrest at him ; to 
regulate formalities ; hand Tinville his victims. It is 
noon: the ^olus- Hall has delivered itself; blows now 
victorious, harmonious, as one irresistible wind. 

And so the work is finished ? One thinks so : and 
yet it is not so. Alas, there is yet but the first-act 
finished ; three or four other acts still to come ; and an 
uncertain catastrophe ! A huge City holds in it so 
many confusions : seven hundred thousand human 
heads; not one of which knows what its neighbour is 
doing, nay not what itself is doing. — See, accordingly, 
about three in the afternoon. Commandant Henriot, 
how instead of sitting cashiered, arrested, he gallops 
along the Quais, followed by Municipal Gendarmes, 
"trampling down several persons!" For the Townhall 
sits deliberating, openly insurgent: Barriers to be shut; 
no Gaoler to admit any Prisoner this day; — and Hen- 
riot is galloping towards the Tuileries, to deliver Robes- 



364 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



pierre. On the Quai de la Ferraillerie, a young Cit- 
oyen, walking with his wife, says aloud: "Gendarmes, 
that man is not your Commandant ; he is under arrest." 
The Gendarmes strike down the young Citoyen with 
the flat of their swords. 

Representatives themselves (as Merlin the Thion- 
viller), who accost him, this puissant Henriot flings into 
guardhouses. He bursts towards the Tuileries Com- 
mittee-room, "to speak with Robespierre:" with diffi- 
culty, the Ushers and Tuileries Gendarmes, earnestly 
pleading and drawing sabre, seize this Henriot; get the 
Henriot Gendarmes persuaded not to fight; get Robes- 
pierre and Company packed into hackney-coaches, sent 
off" under escort, to the Luxembourg and other Prisons. 
This then is the end ? May not an exhausted Conven- 
tion adjourn now, for a little repose and sustenance, "at 
five o'clock ?" 

An exhausted Convention did it ; and repented it. 
The end was not come ; only the end of the second-act. 
Hark, while exhausted Representatives sit at victuals, — 
tocsin bursting from all steeples, drums rolling, in the 
summer evening: Judge Coffinhal is galloping with new 
Gendarmes, to deliver Henriot from Tuileries Commit- 
tee-room ; and does deliver him ! Puissant Henriot 
vaults on horseback ; sets to haranguing the Tuileries 
Gendarmes; corrupts the Tuileries Gendarmes too; trots 
off" with them to Townhall. Alas, and Robespierre is 
not in Prison : the Gaoler showed his Municipal order, 
durst not, on pain of his life, admit any Prisoner ; the 
Robespierre Hackney-coaches, in this confused jangle 
and whirl of uncertain Gendarmes, have floated safe — 
into the Townhall ! There sit Robespierre and Com- 
pany, embraced by Municipals and Jacobins, in sacred 
right of Insurrection ; redacting Proclamations; sound- 
ing tocsins; corresponding with Sections and Mother- 
Society. Is not here a pretty-enough third-act of a 
natural Greek Drama ; catastrophe more uncertain than 
ever ? 



HISTORICAL AxND MISCELLANEOUS. 365 

The hasty Convention rushes together again, in the 
ominous nightfall : President CoUot, for the chair is his, 
enters with long strides, paleness on his face; claps-on 
his hat ; says with solemn tone : " Citoyens, armed 
Villains have beset the Committee-rooms, and got pos- 
session of them. The hour is come, to die at our post!" 
"'Old" answer one and all: "We swear it!" It is no 
rhodomontade, this time, but a sad fate and necessity ; 
unless we do at our posts, we must verily die. Swift 
therefore, Robespierre, Henriot, the Municipality, are 
declared Rebels ; put Hors la Loi, Out of Law. Better 
still, we appoint Barras Commandant of what Armed- 
force js to be had ; send Missionary Representatives to 
all Sections and quarters, to preach, and raise force ; 
will die at least with harness on our back. 

What a distracted City; men riding and running, 
reporting and hearsaying ; the Hour clearly in travail, 
— child not to be named till born ! The poor Prisoners 
in the Luxembourg hear the rumour ; tremble for a new 
September. They see men making signals to them, on 
skylights and roofs, apparently signals of hope ; cannot 
in the least make out what it is. We observe, however, 
in the eventide, as usual, the Death-tumbrils faring 
Southeastward, through Saint-Antoine, towards their 
Barrier du Trone. Saint-Antoine's tough bowels melt; 
Saint-Antoine surrounds the Tumbrils ; says. It shall 
not be. O Heavens, why should it! Henriot and Gend- 
armes, scouring the streets that way, bellow, with 
waved sabres, that it must. Quit hope, ye poor 
Doomed; The Tumbrils move on. 

But in this set of Tumbrils there are two other things 
iiotable : one notable person ; and one want of a nota- 
ble person. The notable person is Lieutenant- General 
I^oiserolles, a nobleman by birth, and by nature ; laying 
down his life here for his son. In the Prison of Saint- 
Lazare, the night before last, hurrying to the Grate to 
hear the Death-list read, he caught the name of his son. 



366 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



The son was asleep at the moment. "I am Loiserolles," 
cried the old man; at Tinville's bar, an error in the 
Christian name is little; small objection was made. — 
The want of the notable person, again, is that of Deputy 
Paine! Paine has sat in the Luxembourg since Janu- 
ary ; and seemed forgotten ; but Fouquier had pricked 
him at last. The Turnkey, List in hand, is marking 
with chalk the outer doors of to-morrow's Foiirnee. 
Paine's outer door happened to be open, turned back 
on the wall ; the Turnkey marked it on the side next 
him, and hurried on : another Turnkey came, and shut 
it; no chalk-mark now visible, the Foiirnee went with- 
out Paine. Paine's life lay not there. — 

Our fifth-act, of this national Greek Drama, with its 
natural unities, can only be painted in gross ; somewhat 
as that antique Painter, driven desperate, did the foam. 
For through this blessed July night, there is clangour, 
confusion very great, of marching troops ; of Sections 
going this way, Sections going that ; of Missionary 
Representatives reading Proclamations by torchlight ; 
Missionary Legendre, who has raised force somewhere, 
emptying out the Jacobins, and flinging their key on 
the Convention table: "I have locked their door; it 
shall be Virtue that reopens it." Paris, we say, it set 
against itself, rushing confused, as Ocean-currents do ; 
a huge Maelstrom, sounding there, under cloud of 
night. Convention sits permanent on this hand ; Mu- 
nicipality most permanent on that. The poor prisoners 
hear tocsin and rumour ; strive to bethink them of the 
signals apparently of hope. Meek continual Twilight 
streaming up, which will be Dawn and a To-morrow, 
silvers the Northern hem of Night ; it wends and wends 
there, that meek brightness, like a silent prophecy, 
along the great ring-dial of the Heaven. So still, 
eternal ! and on Earth all is confused shadow and 
conflict ; dissidence, tumultuous gloom and glare ; and 
"Destiny as yet sits wavering, and shakes her doubtful 
urn." 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



367 



About three in the morning, the dissident Armed- 
Forces have met. Henriot's Armed Force stood ranked 
in the Place de Greve ; and now Barras's, whicli he has 
recruited, arrives there ; and they front each other, 
cannon bristhng against cannon. Citoyens! cries the 
voice of Discretion loudly enough. Before coming to 
bloodshed, to endless civil-war, hear the Convention 
Decree- read: "Robespierre and all rebels Out of 
Law!" — Out of Law? There is terror in the sound. 
Unarmed Citoyens disperse rapidly home. Municipal 
Cannoneers, in sudden whirl, anxiously unanimous, 
range themselves on the Convention side, with shout- 
ing. At which shout, Henriot descends from his upper 
room, far gone in drink as some say ; finds his Place 
de Greve empty ; the cannons' mouth turned towards 
him ; and on the whole, — that it is now the catas- 
trophe ! 

Stumbling in again, the wretched drunk-sobered 
Henriot announces: "All is lost!" ''Miserable, it is 
thou that hast lost it!" cry they; and fling him, or else 
he flings himself, out of window : far enough down ; 
into masonwork and horror of cesspool ; not into death 
but worse. Augustin Robespierre follows him ; with 
the like fate. Saint- Just, they say, called on Lebas to 
kill him ; who would not. Couthon crept under a 
table; attempting to kill himself; not doing it. — On 
entering that Sanhedrim of Insurrection, we find all as 
good as extinct; undone, ready for seizure. Robes- 
pierre was sitttng on a chair, with pistol-shot blown 
through not his head but his under jaw; the suicidal 
hand had failed. With prompt zeal, not without 
trouble, we gather these wrecked Conspirators ; fish up 
even Henriot and Augustin, bleeding and foul ; pack 
them all, rudely enough, into carts ; and shall, before 
sunrise, have them safe under lock and key. Amid 
shoutings and embracings. 

Robespierre lay in an anteroom of the Convention 



368 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

Hall, while his Prison-escort was getting ready ; the 
mangled jaw bound up rudely with bloody linen : a 
spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a table, a deal 
box his pillow ; the sheath of the pistol is still clenched 
convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him : 
his eyes still indicate intelligence ; he speaks no word. 
" He had on the sky-blue coat he had got made for the 
Feast of the Eire Supreme'' — O reader, can thy hard 
heart hold out against that ? His trousers were nan- 
keen; the stockings had fallen down over the ankles. 
He spake no word more in this world. 

And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Conven- 
tion adjourns. Report flies over Paris as on golden 
wings ; penetrates the Prisons ; irradiates the faces of 
those that were ready to perish: turnkeys and moiitons, 
fallen from their high estate, look mute and blue. It 
is the 28th day of July, called loth of Thermidor, year 

1794- 

Fouquier had but to identify ; his Prisoners being 
already Out of Law. At four in the afternoon, never 
before were the streets of Paris seen so crowded. 
From the Palais de Justice to the Place de la Revo- 
lution, for thither again go the Tumbrils this time, it is 
one dense stirring mass ; all windows crammed ; the 
very roofs and ridge-tiles budding forth human Curi- 
osity, in strange gladness. The Death-tumbrils, with 
their motley Batch of Outlaws, some Twenty- three or 
so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon the 
Cordwainer, roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre's 
Tumbril, where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with 
his half- dead Brother, and half-dead Henriot, lie shat- 
tered ; their "seventeen hours" of agony about to end. 
The Gendarmes point their swords at him, to show 
the people which is he. A woman springs on the 
Tumbril ; clutching the side of it with one hand ; wav- 
ing the other Sibyl-like; and exclaims: "The death 
of thee gladdens my very heart, ni'enivre de joie ;" 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



369 



Robespierre opened his eyes; " Scelerat, go down to 
Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!" — At 
the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the 
ground till his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again 
opened; caught the bloody axe. Samson wrenched the 
coat off him ; wrenched the dirty linen from his jaw : 
the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him a cry ; — 
hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be 
too quick ! 

Samson's work done, there bursts forth shout on 
shout of applause. Shout, which prolongs itself not 
only over Paris, but over France, but over Europe, 
and down to this generation. Deservedly, and also 
undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert 
thou worse than other Advocates ? Stricter man, ac- 
cording to his Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of 
probities, benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and such 
like, lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some 
luckier settled age, to have become one of those in- 
corruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had 
marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His poor land- 
lord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue Saint-Honore, 
loved him ; his Brother died for him. May God be 
merciful to him, and to us! 

This is the end of the Reign of Terror ; new glorious 
Revohition named of T her mi dor ; of Thermidor 9th, 
year 2 ; which being interpreted into old slave-style 
means 27th of July, 1794. Terror is ended; and death 
in the Place de la Revolution, were the " Tail of Robes- 
pierre" once executed; which service Fouquier in large 
Batches is swiftly managing. —F. A'., P. ii/., B. vi. 7. 

SANSCULOTTISM. 

It was the frightfullest thing ever borne of Time ? 
One of the frightfullest. This Convention, now grown 
Antijacobin, did, with an eye to justify and fortify it- 
self, publish Lists of what the Reign of Terror had 

24 



270 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

perpetrated : Lists of Persons Guillotined. Tne Lists, 
cries splenetic Abbe Montgaillard, were not complete. 
They contain the names of, How many persons thinks 
the Reader? — Two-thousand all but a few. There 
were above Four-thousand, cries Montgaillard : so 
many were guillotined, fusilladed, noyaded, done to 
dire death; of whom Nine hundred were women. It 
is a horrible sum of human lives, M. I'Abbe : — some 
ten times as many shot rightly on a field of battle, and 
one might have had his Glorious- Victory with Te- 
Dciini. It is not far from the two-hundredth part of 
what perished in the entire Seven-Years War. By 
which Seven- Years War, did not the great Fritz wrench 
Silesia from the great Theresa ; and a Pompadour, 
stung by epigrams, satisfy herself that she could not be 
an Agnes Sorel? The head of man is a strange vacant 
sounding-shell, M. I'Abbe ; and studies Cocker to 
small purpose. 

But what if History somewhere on this Planet were 
to hear of a Nation, the third soul of whom had not, 
for thirty weeks each year, as many third-rate potatoes 
as would sustain him ? History, in that case, feels 
bound to consider that starvation is starvation ; that 
starvation from age to age presupposes much ; History 
ventures to assert that the French Sansculotte of Ninety- 
three, who, roused from long death-sleep, could rush 
at once to the frontiers, and die fighting for an immor- 
tal Hope and Faith of Deliverance for him and his, 
was but the j-^c-^«<3^-miserablest of men! The Irish Sans- 
potato, had he not senses then, nay a soul ! In his 
frozen darkness, it was bitter for him to die famishing ; 
bitter to see his children famish. It was bitter for him to 
be a beggar, a liar and a knave. Nay, if that dreary 
Greenland-wind of benighted Want, perennial from sire 
to son, had frozen him into a kind of torpor and numb 
callosity, so that he saw not, felt not, — was this, for a 
creature with a soul in it, some assuagement ; or the 
:ruellest wretchedness of all? 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



371 



Such things were; such things are; and they g) on 
in silence peaceably : — and Sansculottisms follow them. 
History, looking back over this France through long 
times, back to Turgot's time for instance, when dumb 
Drudgery staggered up to its King's Palace, and in 
wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor and winged rag- 
gedness, presented hieroglyphically its Petition of Griev- 
ances ; and for answer got hanged on a "new gallows 
forty feet high," — confesses mournfully that there is 
no period to be met with, in which the general Twenty- 
five Millions of France suffered less than in this period 
which they name Reign of Terror ! But it was not the 
Dumb Millions that suffered here ; it was the Speaking 
Thousands, and Hundreds and Units ; who shrieked 
and published, and made the world ring with their 
wail, as they could and should : . that is the grand pe- 
culiarity. The friglitfullest Births of Time are never 
the loud-speaking ones, for these soon die ; they are 
the silent ones, which can live from century to century! 
Anarchy, hateful as Death, is abhorrent to the whole 
nature of man ; and so must itself soon die. 

Wherefore let all men know what of depth and of 
height is still revealed in man ; and, with fear and 
wonder, with just sympathy and just antipathy, with 
clear eye and open heart, contemplate it and appro- 
priate it ; and draw innumerable inferences from it. 
This inference, for example, among the first: That "if 
the gods of this lower world will sit on their glittering 
thrones, indolent as Epicurus' gods, with the living 
Chaos of Ignorance and Hunger weltering uncared-for 
at their feet, and smooth Parasites preaching, Peace, 
peace, when there is no peace," then the dark Chaos, 
it would seem, will rise ; — has risen, and O Heavens I 
has it not tanned their skins into breeches for itself? 
That there be no second Sansculottism in our Earth for 
a thousand years, let us understand well what the first 
was ; and let Rich and Poor of us go and do otherwise. 
—F. R., p. III., B. VII. 6. 



272 THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 

ARABIA AND THE ARABS. 
These Arabs Mahomet was born among are certainly 
a notable people. Their country itself is notable ; the 
fit habitation for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock- 
mountains, great grim deserts, alternating with beauti- 
ful strips of verdure : wherever water is, there is green- 
ness, beauty; odoriferous balm-shrubs, date-trees, 
frankincense-trees. Consider that wide waste horizon 
of sand, empty, silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habita- 
ble place from habitable. You are all alone there, left 
alone with the Universe ; by day a fierce sun blazing 
down on it with intolerable radiance ; by night the great 
deep Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a 
swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. There is 
something most agile^ active, and yet most meditative, 
enthusiastic in the Arab character. The Persians are 
called the French of the East ; we will call the Arabs 
Oriental Italians. A gifted noble people ; a people of 
wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these : 
the characteristic of noblemindedness, of genius. The 
wild Bedouin welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one 
having right to all that is there ; were it his worst 
enemy, he will slay his foal to treat him, will serve him 
with sacred hospitality for three days, will set him fairly 
on his way ; — and then, by another law as sacred, kill 
him if he can. In words too, as in action. They are 
not a loquacious people^ taciturn rather ; but eloquent, 
gifted when they do speak. An earnest, truthful kind 
of men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred ; 
but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews 
they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, 
which is not Jewish. They had ' Poetic contests ' among 
them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, in the 
South of Arabia, there were yearly fairs, and there, 
when the merchandising was done. Poets sang for 
prizes: — the wild people gathered to hear that. —H. II. 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 37^ 

WAJRTBURG. 

Wartburg, built by fabulous Ludwig the Springer, 
which gradually overhangs the town of Eisenach, 
grandly the general Thuringian forest ; it is now, — Ma- 
gician Klingsohr having sung there, St. Elizabeth hav- 
ing lived there and done conscious miracles, Martin 
Luther having lived there and done unconscious ditto, — 
the most interesting Residenz, or old grim shell of a 
mountain Castle turned into a tavern, now to be found 
in Germany, or perhaps readily in the world. One 
feels, — standing in Luther's room, with Luther's poor 
old oaken table, oaken inkholder still there, and his 
mark on the wall which the Devil has not yet forgot- 
ten, — as if here once more, with mere Heaven and the 
silent Thuringian Hills looking on, a grand and grand- 
est battle ol "One man versus the Devil and all men" 
was fought, and the latest prophecy of the Eternal was 
made to these sad ages that yet run ; as if here, in fact, 
of all places that the sun now looks upon, were the 
holiest for a modern man. To me, at least, in my poor 
thoughts, there seemed something of authentically di- 
vine in this locality ; as if immortal remembrances, and 
sacred influences and monitions were hovering over it ; 
speaking sad and grand and valiant things to the hearts 
of men. A distinguished person, whom I had the 
honour of attending on that occasion, actually stooped 
down, when he thought my eye was off him ; kissed 
the old oaken table, though one of the grimmest men 
now living ; and looked like lightning and rain all the 
morning after, with a visible moisture in those sun 
eyes of his, and not a word to be drawn from him. 

— M, Prinzcnraub. 

SUNSET IN THE MOUNTAINS. 
Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are 
Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace as 
here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive by 
the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves in 



374 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



masses of a rugged, gigantic character; -which rugged- 
ness, however, is here tempered by a singular airiness 
of form, and softness of environment ; in a climate 
favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered 
with lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage or 
verdure ; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, clus- 
ter round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, 
Beauty alternates with Grandeur : you ride through 
stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by torrents, 
overhung by high walls of rock ; now winding amid 
broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments; now sud- 
denly emerging into some emerald valley, where the 
streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man has again 
found a fair dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had es- 
tablished herself in the bosom of Strength. * * 

Now the Valley closes in abruptly, intersected by a 
huge mountain mass, the strong waterworn ascent of 
which is not to be accomplished on horseback. Arrived 
aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening sun- 
set light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, 
some moments there. An upland irregular expanse of 
wold, where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly 
or slowly arranging their descent towards every quarter 
of the sky. The mountain-ranges are beneath your 
feet, and folded together : only the loftier summits 
look-down here and there as on a second plain ; lakes 
also lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No trace 
of man now visible; unless indeed it were he who fash- 
ioned that little visible link of Highway, here, as would 
seem, scaling the inaccessible, to unite Province with 
Province. But sunwards, lo you ! how it towers sheer 
up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and centre of the 
mountain region ! A hundred and a hundred savage 
peaks, in the last light of Day ; all glowing, of gold 
and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness ; there 
in their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night 
when Noah's Deluge first dried ! Beautiful, nay sol- 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 



375 



emn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He 
gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, 
almost with longing desire; never till this hour had he 
known Nature, that she was One, that she was his 
Mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow was fading 
into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now depart- 
ed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death 
and of Life, stole through his soul; and he felt as if 
Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not 
dead, as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that 
splendour, and his own spirit were therewith holding 
communion. —S. /?. II. 6. 

''ON THE HIGH TABLE-LAND." 

Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, 
musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in 
front of the Mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure 
Dome, and around me, for walls, four azure-flowing 
curtains, — namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose 
bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to 
fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these 
Mountain hollows ; with their green flower-lawns, and 
white dames and damosels, lovely enough : or better 
still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a 
Mother baking bread, with her children round her: — all 
hidden and protectingly folded-up in the valley-folds; 
yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to 
see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, 
that lay round my mountain seat, which, in still weather, 
were wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with 
metal tongue ; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed 
their vitality by repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon, as 
on a culinary horologe, I might read the hour of the 
day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as kind house- 
wives at morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their 
husbands' kettles ; and ever a blue pillar rose up into 
the air, successively or simultaneously, from each of the 



n^ 



THE CARLYLE ANTHOLOGY. 



nine, saying, as plainly as smoke could say : Such and 
such a meal is getting ready here. Not uninteresting ! 
For you have the whole Borough, with all its love- 
makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and con- 
tentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with 
your hat. — If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to 
look into the business of the World in its details, here 
perhaps was the place for combining it into general 
propositions, and deducing inferences therefrom. 

Often also could I see the black Tempest marching 
in anger through the Distance : round some Schreck- 
horn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour 
gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down 
like a mad witch's hair ; till, after a space, it vanished, 
and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood 
smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. 
—S. R. II. 9. 

AN ARCTIC SUNSET. 

Silence as of death ; for Midnight, even in the Arctic 
latitudes, has its character : nothing but the granite 
cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow- 
heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North 
the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were 
slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crim- 
son and cloth-of-gold ; yet does his light stream over 
the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire-pillar, shoot- 
ing downwards to the abyss, and hide itself under my 
feet. In such moments, Solitude also is invaluable ; for 
who would speak, or be looked on, when behind him 
Hes all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except the watch- 
man ; and before him the silent Immensity, and 
Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch- 
lamp ? —s. R. II. 8. 

OVERLOOKING A TOWN. 
A PECULIAR feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, 
when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he de- 
scries lying far below, embosomed among its groves 



HISTORICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS. 377 

and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a 
toy-box, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were 
seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious traf- 
fic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward-pointing 
finger ; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of 
Life-breath : for always, of its own unity, the soul gives 
unity to whatso it looks on with love ; thus does the 
little Dwellingplace of men, in itself a congeries of 
houses and huts, become for us an individual, almost a 
person. But what thousand other thoughts unite 
thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena of 
joyous or mournful experiences ; if perhaps the cradle 
we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones 
still dwell there, if our Buried ones there slumber! 
—S. /?. II. 6. 

GLIMPSES. 

On fine evenings I was wont to carry-forth my supper 
(bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out of doors. 
On the coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach 
by climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas 
would set-up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was 
placed: there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the 
distant western Mountains, consumed, not without rel- 
ish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, 
that hush of World's expectation as Day died, were 
still a Hebrew Speech for me ; nevertheless I was look- 
ing at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for 
their gilding. —S. R. II. 2. 



INDEX. 



Addison's mechanism, 174. 

Affectation, what is? 178. 

Al Amin, 77. 

Allegory, 228-229. 

Almack's, 47, 173. 

America, as the model republic, 

2S2-285. 
American bores, 285. 
Americans not poetical, 162. 
Apes, the Dead Sea, 267, 268. 
Arabs, their character and country, 

372. 
Araucana, 152. 
Ariosto, 190. 
Aristogiton, 16. 
Art, 28. 

Atheistic science, 231. 
August the Strong, King of Poland, 

Austria, rejection of the reforma- 
tion, and the consequence, 249. 

Bacon's Novum Organum, 68, 69. 

Ballet-girls, Dr. Peasemeal on, 42. 

Bastille, the taking of. 321-333. 

Bayle, Pierre, his writings a mighty 
tide of ditch-water, 161. 

Beaten paths, 178. 

Beaumont and Fletcher compared 
to Shakspeare, 166. 

Beauty, sayingof Goethe's on, 155. 

Beginnings, 56. 

Belief, 260. 

Benevolence, sentimental, its folly, 
301 ; platform fevor for, 302, 
303 ; false, 303, 304 ; its dan- 
ger, 304. 

Biographic interest in art, 27. 

Biography and history, 1S3, 187. 



Biography, what it should be, 187. 

Blockhead in office, 292. 

Bonnemere, Aubin, at the taking 
of the Bastile, 323, 325. 

Books of Greece, 140; and univer- 
sities, 141 ; and the church, 

^43- .... 

Bores, the eighteen millions of m 

America, 285. 

Borgia, passions of, 158. 

Boswell, nS-123, 187, 206; his 
love for Johnson, 120; unjustly 
treated by the world, 122 ; 
his feeling toward Johnson not 
sycophancy but reverence, 122; 
his History of England, 183. 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 229. 

Burns, 19, 35, 124, 15S ; contrasted 
with Schiller, 112 ; his com- 
panions poverty, love, and 
couraige, 125 ; his poetry, 197 ; 
his Tarn o' Slianter, 198; 
Jolly Beggars, 19S ; his songs, 
200. 

Burns and Byron, 123, 150, 153. 

Byron, 123, 144; illustrating un- 
happiness, 9 ; his poetry not 
true, 177 ; English Sen.inien- 
talist compared with " VVer- 
ther," 209, 210. 

Byron and Burns, 123, 150, 153. 

Cagliostro, 103. 

Cant, 30, 120, 176, 206. 

Capital punishment, the true argu- 
ment for, 299, 300. 

Catholicism, media3val, 242 ; 
Dante's expression of it, 242, 



380 



INDEX. 



Cervantes and Byron, 123. 

Cervantes, 151, 179; purest of all 
humorists, 189. 

Champ de Mars, the preparation 
for the fete at, 333-339 ; the 
fete, 339, 340. 

Change, movement and, 254-256. 

Charlemagne, 51. 

Charles I., 82. 

Charles XII., 92 ; compared to 
Goethe, 109. 

Childhood, 57. 

Chivalry, 35. 

Christianism, 226. 

Christianity, the " Worship of 
Sorrow," 257 ; and Greek 
philosophy, 257, 258. 

Church, 143. 

Church liturgy, 144. 

Clemence, the wine merchant, his 
rescue of a Swiss, 351. 

Clergy, a new, 263, 264. 

Clothes, 32-44. 

Cobbett, Wm., great improviser, 
161. 

Coleridge, 34, 129; at home, 129, 
130; his talk, 131; his ir- 
resolution, 132 ; his character, 
133 ; his remarks on melody, 

Companionship, 27. 

Concealment, efficacies of, 13. 

Conscience, 31. 

Corday, Charlotte, 352-358; her 
death, 357, 358. 

Courage, 152. 

Court, senate, and battle-field in 
history to recede — the tem- 
ple, workshop, and social 
hearth to advance, 186. 

Creeds and forms, 264, 265. 

Criticism, scientific, 173. 

Critic Fly, 170, 

Cromwell, Oliver, 17, 80; in 1653, 
81 ; his statue, 295. 

Cumberland, Duke of, 93. 

Custom, 53. 

D'Alembert's motto, 151. 
Dandiacal sect, 45. 



Dandies, 43, 44, 45, 46. 

Dante, 64 ; his portrait, 64 ; his 
intensity, 65 ; his tenderness, 
66 ; Beatrice, 67 ; compared 
with Shakspeare, 67, 69 ; 
growing lean over Divine 
Comedy, 160; Divine Com- 
edy, 196 ; the spokesman of 
the Middle Ages, 242 ; com- 
pared with Luther, 244. 

Danton, 100-102. 

Darnley, Henry, 42, 1S5. 

David, 17, 18. 

Death, 58. 

Death and birth, vesper and matin 
bells, 55. 

Defoe's talent for description, 190. 

De Launay, at the defense of the 
Bastille, 321 et seq. ; his 
death, 329. 

Demi-god arrangement, the, 16. 

Democracy, 94, 100, 145. 

Description, talent for, 190. 

Desmouliiis, Camille, 102. 

Despreaux, Boileau, 42. 

Devise, 258. 

Diderot compared with Lessing, 

II3- 
Digestion, 31. 
Dilettanti, 152. 

Dilettantism, the gospel of, 267. 
Discovery to be made in literature, 

161. 
Divine Comedy, 196. 
Don Juan, 177. 
Dumdrudge, the fictitious village 

of, 305- 
Dunce, the, 20. 
Duties of man, 25. 

Easy writing, 159. 
Editors ready writers, 161. 
Editors the new clergy and true 

Church of England, 263, 264 
Education, 313, 314. 
Eighteen hundred forty- eight, 375, 

378. 
Eighteenth century, latter half of, 

Werther, 204. 
Elect of scoundselism, 297-299. 



INDEX. 



381 



Eliot, 80. 

End, 56. 

Enemy, the (stupidity), 22. 

Enfranchisement, spiritual, 13. 

Englami, the union with Scotland, 

316. 
Ennui, 36, 37, 38. 
Epitaph, 39. 
Erostratus, 42. 
Eugene, Prince, 95. 
Everlasting yea, 12. 
Evil resisted, 19. 
Example, 180. 

Facts engraved hierograms, 15. 

Fame, true and false, 179; love of, 
i8i ; vanity of, 181 ; comfort 
that she forgets us, 182. 

Faults, 17 ; the greatest, to be con- 
scious of none, 17 ; of a work 
I of art, 170. 

Faust, Goethe's analysis of char- 
acter-, 217-221. 

Fear, the first duty of man to sub- 
due, 23S. 

Foolishest man in the earth, 22. 

Force, everywhere force, 231. 

Forms, 252. 

Formulas, 251, 252. 

Fox, George, 74. 

Fox, the, 21. 

Fraction of life, 12. 

France, rejection of the reforma- 
tion in, 250. 

Frederick the Great, 87. 

Frederick and Napoleon, 89. 

Frederick Wilbelm, Pesne's por- 
traits of, 83 ; father of Fred- 
erick the Great, 83-S6 ; anec- 
dote of apple woman and 
theological candidate, 86. 

Free thinker, 259. 

French revolution, 90. 

Gentlemen, 33. 
Genius, world's judgment of, 15. 
Genuine things good, 178. 
Georget at the taking of the Bas- 
tille, 324. 
Giants, 234. 



Gifted man, the, 20. 

God-devils, 16. 

God wish, 235, 240. 

Goethe, 19, 108-111, 144, 179; 
his equanimity, 108 ; his char- 
acter, no; hard worker, 160; 
two stanzas from, 182 ; Sor- 
rows of Werther, 204-208, 
209 ; contrasted with Schiller, 
212, 216; Faust, 217-221. 

Goldsmith, 205. 

Good and evil, 16. 

Goose, the, 20. 

Gossip, 29. 

Governors the exponents of a 
people's worth, 2S6. 

Governing, the wise man's harshest 
duty, 285. 

Government a spigot of taxation, 
183; the, of small men, 288; 
submission, a help to good, 

293- 
Gray's poetry laborious mosaic, 

205. 
Great men, 63. 
Grimm, 235. 
Gullibility a blessing, 31. 

Half and halfness, 38. 

Halfness, 153. 

Hampden, 80. 

Happiness, 9. 

Harmodius, 16. 

Heathenism, 226. 

Heaven compared to Spartan 
mother, 6. 

Hell, 266, 267. 

Henriot, efforts for Robespierre, 
363 ; outlawry, 365 ; flimg^ 
from a window, 367 ; death,' 

369- 

Plero and valet, 17. 

Hero-worship, 50, 120. 

Historian's two objects, the writing 
and the writer, not the thing 
written of, 186. 

History and biography, 183-187 ; 
how written, 1S4; dignity (jf, 
186 ; the nation happiest 
whose annals are tiresome, 306. 



382 



INDEX. 



Homer, 67 ; his poems songs, 
156; his fame, 181 ; his talent 
for description, 190; far supe- 
rior to the singer of the Nibe- 
lungen, 192. 

Hume compared with Lessing, 113. 

Humor and sensibility, 188. 

Humor, true, 189. 

Humorists, 189. 

Ideal, the, 13. 

Iliad, compared to Nibelungen 

Lied, 192. 
Impossible, 19. 

Improvisator corporation, 167. 
Influences, enduring nature of, 4. 
Insignificant, nothing is, 53. 
Islam, 238, 239 ; a confused form 

of Christianity, 240. 
Italy, rejection of the reformation 

and its consequence, 250. 

Jews, the, 288. 

Job, book of, 195. 

Jolly Beggars, igS. 

Johnson, Samuel, 34, 114-11S, 
146 ; his affectionate nature, 
115; parting with Cath. Cham- 
bers, 117; his atonement for 
disobedience, 117; better for 
being poor, 149, 151 ; his 
humor, 189; his prose trueand 
sound, 205. 

Judgment of a foreign work, 172. 

Junius, the elder, 16. 

Justice, the one thing necessary, 
304 ; the only true success, 
313- 

Kings, their overthrow in 1848, 

279 ; as impostors in 1848, 280. 
Klopstock's Messias, 204. 
Knowledge got through working, 

5 ; conditions of, 21. 
Know thyself — impossibility of the 

precept, 4. 
Knox, John, 73. 
Koran, 78, 193 ; read 70,000 times 

by Mahometan doctors, 194; 

found in fragments, 194 ; writ- 



ten as badly as ever book was, 

195- 
Kotzebue, August von, a warning 
to playwrights, 180, 1 88. 

Laborare est orare, 5, 

Laud, 82. 

Laugiiter, 48. 

Lefevre, Abbe, 330. 

Lessing, 113,204; quotation from, 
178. 

Leuthen, battle of, go. 

Life, fraction of, 12 ; to renounce 
is to begin to live, 12 ; a 
dream, 56; of man in England, 
183 ; no sport, stern reality, 
228. 

Life-tree, 55. 

Literary Guild, organization of, 
148. 

Literature, 26, 137 ; power of, 138; 
anarchy of, 138; chaotic con- 
duion of, 139 ; an apocalypse 
of nature, 144 ; and govern- 
ment, 145 ; phases of, 145 ; 
soldiers of, 147 ; affectation 
in — Byron, 176. 

Lioness, human nature compared 
to, 4. 

Locke, 151 ; a religious man, paved 
the way for banishing religion, 
206. 

Lorraine, Claude, 165. 

Loiserolles, sacrifice for his son, 
365, 366. 

Louis XVI. at the storming of the 
Tuileries, 346, et seq, 

Louis XV., his death, 319-321. 

Luther, 71, 23S ; his portrait, 72; 
his passions, 158 ; compared 
with Dante, 244 ; at the Diet 
of Worms, 246. 

Mahomet, 77 ; his beauty, 78 ; 
his sincerity, 78 ; his way of 
life, 79 ; his Koran, 193, 238; 
Ills religion, 23S, 239. 

Mahomelanism, Growth of, 240 

Mammon, 151. 

Manhood and necessity, 13. 



INDEX. 



383 



Man, the sjjirit he worked in, 15. 

Man's life a poem, 40, 41. 

Man's activity and attainment, re- 
sults of, 54. 

Mnrikind and sheep, 23; brother- 
hood of, 55 ; generations of, 
55 ; passage of, 57. 

Marat, at the taking of the Bastille, 
326; his death, 355. 

Marcus Brutus, 16. 

Marie Antoinette, her bearing at 
the desertion of the Tuilcries, 
346 ; her death, 359. 

Marseillaise, tlie, at the storming of 
the Tuileries, 348, et seq. 

Mary Stuart, 185. 

Melody and rhythm, 156. 

Mendicant orders, 149. 

Mephistopheles, 217. 

Metaphysics, the disease of, 259 ; 
speculative, 260. 

Methodism, 270. 

Milo, 42. 

Milton, 144, 151 ; compared to 
Shakspeare, 159; to Schiller, 

215 

Mirabeau, 94-100, quoted from, 
19; on Frederick the Great, 
88 ; his books alarum fires, 97 ; 
a swallower of formulas, 98 ; 
his tliree ways of living, 100 ; 
his opinion of Neckar, 100. 

Miracle of miracles we are, 233. 

Misanthrope, Scottish iron, anec- 
dote of, 10. 

Misunderstandings, 18 ; all battle 
a, 19. 

Moderation, 153. 

Moore, Dr., on Frederick the 
Great, 88. 

Moliere, 146, 190. 

Money-society, 150. 

Morality, 25. 

M Dritz (Maurice), Elector of Sax- 
ony, 91 ; Marcchal de Saxe, 
93 ; anecdote. Scavenger, 93 ; 
spelling, 93. 

Morrison's pill, 269. 

Mountains, sunset in the, 373-375 ; 
scenery among the, 375. 



Movement and change, 254-256. 
Music, definition of poetry, 155. 

Napoleon, 19, 94, 238, and Fred- 
erick, 89; compared to Goethe 
109. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, at the mas- 
sacre of the Swiss Guards, 350. 

Necessity and manhood, 13, 

Necessity of cloth, 32, 33. 

Negation, science of, 165. 

Newspapers, the mission of, 263, 
264. 

Nil admirari, 50. 

Nibeltnigen Lied, 191 ; compared 
to the Iliad, 192 ; a true old 
singer, 193. 

Nobility, the true type, 9.' 

No Popery, the folly of the cry, 
247. 

Norse belief, soul of, 237. 

Norse people, 236. * 

Novels, fashionable, 47. 

Novel writing, vacuity of, 191. 

Odin, 236. 

Oedipus Tyrannus, 173. 

Ojien secret, 153. 

Oratory, its worthlessness, 308-312. 

Organization of the literary guild, 

148. 
Ou' Clo', 288. 

Paine, Tom, his escape, 366. 
Paganism, 226 ; theories about, 

227 ; origin of, 229. 
Past, present, and future, 55, 235. 
Parliament, del)ates in, 30CS-312. 
Peasemeal, Dr., on ballet-girls, 42. 
Peerages, modern, 296. 
Pented bredd, 73. 
Perseverance, 20. 
Persiflage, 105. 
Petrarch, harti writer, 160. 
Peter the Great, 92. 
Phaeton, 36. 

Pilgrim's Progress, 229. 
Pius IX., 275-278. 
Place in history, 41, 42. 
Plato, fancy of, 229. 



384 



INDEX. 



Poet and prophet, 153. 

Poetic beauty, derivation of, 175. 

Poetry, definition of, 155; con- 
ditions of, 157 ; banished 200 
years ago, 158 ; origin of, 162 ; 
flourishes under Elizabeth, dies 
- under George, 162 ; shines 
after Thermopylae, flies after 
Bunker's Hill, 162 ; inspiration, 
162; progress of, 163; study 
of, 171 ; an amusement, 207. 

I'oet's life, 152. 

Politeness, 34. 

P.*litics, 26. 

Pillnitz, 84, 85, 92. 

Poor, the, to be pitied on account 
of their ignorance, 315. 

Pope, a reforming, 275-278. 

Poverty, 36 ; of literary men, 149 ; 
no evil, 149, 151. 

Premier, the, as representative of 
the English race, 2S9-292. 

Presbyterians, 82. 

Press, superseding the pulpit and 
senate, 148. 

Printing, 142, 143 ; equivalent to 
democracy, 145. 

Prisons, model, 297-299. 

Problem solved, the, 12. 

Prophet and poet, 153. 

Protestantism, its vitality, 247 ; 
its message to the nations, 
24S. 

Public speaker, the, 42, 43. 

Pulpit, 139. 

Purse, 33. 

Pym. 80. 

Quack, the, 30, 103, 120. 

Quack and dupe, 30. 

Quackery and dupery in religion, 

227. 
Quakers, 74. 

Ri\CINE, 146. 

Raphael, best of portrait painters, 

20. 
Readers f^r amusement lose the 

nature of poetry, 175. 
Reading, 166. 



Ready writers, 160. 

Real man, the, 15. 

Reform, by tremendous cheers, 

292 ; possible for everybody 

over one man, 293. 
Reformation, 185; the, 243; the 

issue in the Diet at Worms, 

246 ; the reformation and the 

nations, 248. 
Reign of Terror, number slain in, 

370 ; prosperity of the people 

in, 371- 

Religion, a civil protection, 207 ; 
not the church creed but the 
thing a man practically be- 
lieves, 225 ; the state of, 261 ; 
teaching of by machinery, 
262 ; no new needed, 270 ; 
what it consists of, 271. 

Religious enthusiasm, 45. 

Reporter's gallery, a fourth estate 
in Parliament, 145. 

Republics, pure democracy impos- 
sible, 281 ; the ancient repub- 
lics real aristocracies, 282 ; the 
United States as the model re- 
public a failure, 282, et seq. 

Reviewer, 167 ; a greater man than 
the author, ] 68 ; panders to 
laziness and stupidity, 169. 

Reviewing, two ways of, 167. 

Revolution, the, of 1848, 275-278. 

Reward to be had in heaven, or 
nowhere ; needless ; shown by 
Burns's songs, 7. 

Rhythm and melody, 156. 

Richardson's talent for description, 
190. 

Riches and gigmen, 35. 

Richter, Jean Paul, 71, 112, 231. 

Ridicule, 48 ; test of truth, 49. 

Right always one with might, 315. 

Robertson's History of Scotland, 
i84. 

Robespierre, Augustus, shares his 
brother's fate, 363 ; attempts 
suicide, 367 ; death, 369. 

Robespierre, 103 ; the story of his 
fall, 361-369 ; defence in the 
convention, 362, 363 ; attempt 



INDEX. 



385 



at suicide, 367 ; his death, 
369 ; his character, 369. 

Rcederer, at the Tuileries, 346 et 
seq. 

Roland, Madame, 360, 361. 

Roland of Roncesvailes, 51. 

Romance in reality, 52. 

Roman augurs, the ritualistic con- 
troversialists compared to, 265, 
266. 

Romance, age of, 51. 

Romanism, oscillation not revival 
of, 250, 251. 

Rousseau, 106, 188. 

Runes, 140, 141. 

Saint Just, 362 et seq. 
Savages' idea of fire, 234. 
Scandinavian anthology, 233. 
Scepticism, 226. 

Schiller, in, 112; never done, 
160 ; quotation from, 188, 
209; his poetry, 210; his ac- 
curacy, 211 ; contrasted with 
Goethe, 212 ; his fastidious- 
ness, 212 : his Wm. Tell, 213 ; 
his want of humor, 213; his 
greatness, 214 ; his pathos, 
215 ; con^.pared with Milton, 
215 ; compared with Goethe, 
216. 

Science and religion, 234. 

Scotland; Robertson's history of, 
184 ; the union witli England, 
316. 

Scott, Sir Walter, 126; his many 
volumes and few quoted sen- 
tences, 127; the healthiest of 
men, 128 ; improviser, i6i ; 
his poetry, 202. 

Scoundrelism, elect of, 297-299. 

Self. 186. 

Self-development, 4. 

Self-worship, 46. 

Sensibility and humor, 1S8. 

Sentinientalism, 29. 

Sentimentalist, 29. 

Shadow of ourselves, the, ii. 

Shakspeare, "144, 146, 158, 165, 
'77> 1795 a supposititious life 
25 



of, 17 ; and Dante, 67, 69 ; 
his supremacy, 68 ; his univer- 
sality, 69 ; his reflections of 
man from a level mirror, 69 ; 
his tranquillity and mirthful- 
ness, 69 ; his catholic spirit, 
71 ; his unconsciousness com- 
pared to Milton's, 159; no 
easy writer, 160 ; his works 
require study, 172 ; his me- 
chanism, 174; his fame, 181 ; 
his humor, 189; religion of, 

243- 
Shoeblack, his requirements, II. 

Shifty woman, a, 31. 

Silence, empire of, 15. 

Silence and speech, 13 ; and se 

crecy, 13. 
Silent men, 14. 
Sincerity, 176. 
Singularity, 178. 
Skill, 54. 

Smoke, consume your own, 12, 107. 
Society, 25, 26, 27. 
Society — money, 150. 
Socrates, 151. 
Song. 156. 
Sophocles, 173, 179. 
Sorrow, the worship of, 257, 258. 
Soul, 269. 

Spain, rejection of the reformation 
and its consequence, 249. 

Speech stifling thought, 14 ; prov- 
erb of, 14, 142. 

Sphinx, fable of the, 3 ; life com- 
pared to, 3. 

St. Chrysostom's saying, 232. 

Stael, Madame de, 95. 

Statues in England, 295 ; Crom- 
well's, 295. 

Steamships crossing Atlantic, 19. 

Sterne's humor, 189. 

Stupidity, 22. 

Sunset on the mountains, 373, 37$ ; 
in the Arctic latitudes, 376. 

Superstition, in its death lair, 253. 

Surgeon, anecdote of, 10. 

Swift's irony, 189. 

Swiss Guards, the massacre of, 
345-352. 



386 



INDEX. 



Tacitus not a ready writer, 159. 
Talent, spiritual, a nation's greatest 

crop, 287. 
Talleyrand at the Champ de Mars, 

342, 343- 

Tallien, his attack on Robespierre 
in the convention, 361, 362. 

Tarn o' Shanter, 198. 

Tasso, 146. 

Taste, 164. 

Tell, William, Schiller's, 213. 

Teufelsdrockh, 44, 74, 76 ; on ne- 
cessity of cloth, 32, 33 ; his 
rejected epitaph, 39 ; on the 
Dandiacal sect, 45. 

Thinker, 236. 

Thunder, 235. 

Thuriot at the taking of the Bas- 
tille, 322, 323 ; at the down- 
fall of Robespierre, 362, 363. 

Time a great mystery, 230. 

Tools and the man, 8. 

Tournay, Louis, at the capture of 
the Bastille, 323. 

Tree Igdrasil, 235. 

Turkish balh-keeper's aim realized 
in Scott's poems, 203. 

Unbelief, 5. 

Unconsciousness of genius, 159, 
Unhappiness, 11; man's comes of 

greatness, 11. 
Universe, the thought of God, 154. 
Universities and books, 141, 142. 
Unknown, gi'eat, the, 14. 
Utility of art, 176. 



Valkyrs, 238. 

Vicar of Wakefield, 205. 

View-hunting, 190. 

Virgil not a ready writer, 159. 

Voltaire, 104 ; he deals in ridicule 
not humor, 190; in his eyes 
religion a nuisance, 207, 208 ) 
the denier, 217 ; the enemy 
of superstition, 252, 253; fail- 
ing to understand Christian 

.ity, 257. 

Voting, 2S9. 
Vulgar, the, 35. 

Wages, inadequacy of, illustrated 

by Milton and Cromwell, 6. 
Wallace, the triumph of his cause, 

315- 

War, its absurdity, 305, 306 ; as a 
hindrance of work, 307 ; mod- 
ern European wars, 307, 308. 

Wartburg, Luther's room at, 71, 

373-" 
Werther, 204-209 ; compared with 

Byron, 209, 2io. 
William the Silent, 14. 
Wordsworth, resemblance to 

Goethe, 108. 
Work, 182; blessedness of, 5; as 

worship, 271, 272. 
World a miracle, 230. 
Worms, the Diet at, 246. 
Worship, work as, 271, 272. 
Worship is transcendent wonder^ 

232. 
Writing, art of, 140. 



THE END. 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 














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